This is a review aimed at people looking at this scope as a way to get into birding; in addition to pros/cons, I'm going to give my advice for new birders to get started using this, which can maybe also help you tell if digiscoping is going to be the right birdwatching approach for you. I've had this scope for a little less than a year. I have not used any high-end cameras to compare it to. Pros: Really inexpensive way to get into the hobby. For a relatively small cost, you're getting a great zoom level. Perfect for bird identification photos. Seems really robust and sturdy. I don't mind just slinging this over the shoulder and going for a hike, rather than having a lens where I'm worried that any bump is going to cause a misalignment. It is a little heavy, but I'd rather heavy and sturdy than light and fragile. Cons: Weak link is the connector to the phone. It's fiddly to get aligned just right sometimes. Sometimes I think I've gotten a great shot and then checking it out afterwards I have weird dark patches on the photo because the scope and camera weren't totally aligned. The photos you get won't be professional quality. this is less a knock on the scope, moreso, on digiscoping as compared to traditional cameras. You'll get great photos for identification and sharing. If there was one feature I'd like on the scope itself, I'd love some tactile indicator on the focus adjustment knob so you can remember just by touch which way is focusing closer and further. I find myself frequently turning it the wrong way. General advice: 1. Get a good tripod. You'll want one that's adjustable up to standing height, light-weight, and has a pan/tilt-handle. (I got one that didn't have a handle and ended up deciding that I needed to make one). The tripod that comes with the scope is sturdy, but setting up and sitting on the ground isn't great for birding. I got one with a ball-head mount, and I'm not sure it's better than one with bi-directional pan head. My sense is that ball-heads allow you to quickly adjust to unusual angles, but pan heads are a little easier for fine-tuning your adjustments. The scope is quite front-heavy when mounted on a tripod. 2. Use a good camera app. I use Camera+ 2 on the iphone and find that it's a lot better than the standard camera app. While you can use both the manual focus and the phone's focus ability, I find the best approach is to get my focus close with the scope, and then use the focus on the camera do the rest. A great approach is to use autofocus on something at the same depth as the bird (a branch or leaf), and lock the focus... then you don't have to worry about the bird moving and the camera suddenly deciding to focus on the distant background. Speaking of apps, you'll definitely want to get Merlin, for use with identifying birds... you can leave Merlin running, stay in your camera app, and you'll get notifications when new bird calls are detected. (also, this is a beat of a cheat, but playing a bird call back through Merlin can be a great way to get a shy songbird to come out in the open.) Paying attention to bird calls and learning to recognize them is both rewarding and really useful. 3. The zoom on this scope is really powerful, but if there's one thing that's challenging, it's when a bird is too close. There's just no way to focus on a bird that's closer than about 12 feet (and you can't quickly dismount your phone if you want to switch). It's important to understand your zoom on your camera phone: typically you've got both an optical and digital zoom. Digital zoom isn't actually zooming in any closer, just expanding the pixels, so generally there isn't any point in zooming in beyond your optical zoom threshold. Remember that the closer you are, the narrower your depth of field is, so don't bother trying to get as close as you can. If you're photographing a larger bird like a goose or heron, you might not be able to get it all into the shot if you're too close. 4. Depending on your phone settings, you may find that your picture is inside a circular vignette, especially when your phone's zoom is set to 1. For my phone, there's a zoom sweet-spot between 1.5 to 2, where the picture fills the full frame and I'm still using optical zoom. 5. Accept that it's going to take a while to set up a shot. This is ultimately the big downside to digiscoping: you can't just point-and-shoot. You'll miss out on some shots because the bird takes off while you're still trying to dial in your focus. When I'm photographing songbirds, I spend a lot of time observing what branches they like and where they move, getting my focus locked in on where I think it's going to go, and then waiting. Getting any good action shots likely requires both a lot of preparation and luck. 6. Bring a pair of binoculars, even cheap small ones. If you're trying to tell at a distance if a bird is worth your effort, it's easier to just check it out through binoculars first. 7. Start with wetlands. Geese and ducks make way better targets for the beginner, since they're large and slow-moving. Songbirds are a lot more challenging. Practice quickly getting your zoom and focus set. Because you're looking down at the scope rather than through it (like a binocular or telescope), it can take a little while to actually get it pointed where you want as well, so it's good to practice using landmarks (ie. that bird is below a prominent tree on the horizon so I'll find that tree first, and then pan down until I get to the bird). 8. A lot of your photo quality is going to be determined by your post-processing. This is something I'm not really experienced with yet, but if you want to try and push this beyond just identification into really vivid, high-quality photos, you'll need to work in a desktop photo-processing app.
