...Just a Little More Zoom
The "Mega" Monocular
visitors since October 5, 1998 visitors since October 5, 1998
The "Mega" monocular
Components
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If you've tried using the monocular and want to get just a little closer to your subject without investing in a lot of expensive equipment, here's a cheap possibility -- use a teleconverter.
My local store sells a cheap ($30) 1.8x Quantaray teleconverter designed for video cameras. It isn't much use for my digicam (causes a lot of vignetting) but it can be attached quite easily to the end of the monocular and boosts the monocular's power to about 14.4x, giving my camera an equivalent focal length of 830mm, using the camera's digital zoom setting of 1.6x. In order to attach the teleconverter to the monocular I first had to clip off a couple of small plastic "arms" on the teleconverter that were designed to clamp onto the inner rim of a video camera's lens housing. I use a modified piece of an old film canister that fits snugly onto the end of the monocular and inside the grooves on the underside of the teleconverter to align the two components and an elastic band to hold the whole thing together. Not the most elegant solution, but it works! In order for the camera to focus through this contraption, you must focus the monocular all the way at its closest setting. Putting the camera in macro mode also helps. This is a mixed blessing! It means that the camera cannot focus on objects that are much closer than 50 meters, but it means that the monocular's eye-piece is as close as possible to the camera's lens reducing as much vignetting as possible. After cropping out the vignetted portions of the image, I'm usually able to get a useable image of at least 880x660 from my camera's (Epson PhotoPC 600) 1024x768 setting. Your mileage may vary. If you want still more zoom power, I've got one last recommendation! |
