Many argue that a zoom eyepiece isn't as sharp as a fixed lens. This maybe true, however the Swaro zoom is very sharp indeed even up towards the heady 60x end of its range. At 20x the image really is first class and little beats it in my opinion.

The Eagleeye 10x (unfortunately) has largely become redundant now the Swaro and Contax has arrived. Not because its a bad eyepiece, on the contrary, its an excellent eyepiece, but its more to do with a miss-match in the set-up. Basically the Contax doesn't like working with the mechanics of the 10x. To get a sasfactory image using this combination means the Contax has to be about 5cm away from the glass of the eyepiece - just too much fiddling for bird photography I'm afraid!

With the sad demise of my beloved 4500 (the zoom-in button finally rusted to the body!) and with no real leader coming from the crop of digiscoping cameras I opted for this model. Sadly Contax have stopped making digital cameras (as from December 2004) which means this model is now out of production.

I have added a short review of the U4R to my website (it can be found by clicking here) so I won't dwell on the advantages and disadvantages of this camera here. However its a 4 megapixel camera which boasts a 3.3 frame per second shooting speed and is also incredibly small. Its good, but far from perfect.

An essential part of the digiscoping 'package' - your tripod needs to be stable and capable of holding the extra weight of a camera on your scope. I purchased the carbon legs as wind in Ecuador is virtually non-existant and was rarely an issue, unlike being back in the UK. However after having the legs only six months two of the rubber feet fell off, the low-angle adapter (a very useful piece) fell out and one of the leg tightening brackets broke. My respect for Manfrotto's built quality suddenly took a steep tumble. The legs are utter rubbish, I see they have now brought out a new set, which I hope are much better than the 443s. I'm going back to my old metal 055s.

The head however, is superb. Its much better for digicoping having no give when untightened and tightened back up. The balancing bracket is also good too, helping that little bit more when a camera gets put on the end of a scope.

One of the most common problems digiscopers face is getting a static set-up.  Many of the blurry images you will get are down to vibration and camera shake, a lot of these can be remedied by a solid tripod and quality head.  Another tip to getting a sturdier set-up is to use a large bean-bag placed on top of your scope - this reduces the vibration further and should lead to sharper results.