Thank you. I decided to go with the Manfrotto 057 3 section rapid instead of the 055. It may be overkill. But it will be more stable than the 055 no matter what I put on it. It should at nearly double the price.
Hi Joe
a little late but...
I was just writing up a post about my expérience with the Kowa set-up
First the good news
the better tripod is a good idea as Horukuro says stability is your friend !
Then...
Did you buy the TSN-PA7 already ?
I have been using one for about three months now and and coming to regret the purchase
I'm a birder who takes photographs for ID purposes and basically I can't produce consistently 'correct identification images '
By that I mean that if the bird is at more than 50m or so I have great difficultly with fine focus
My wife with her Canon 90d / EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM can beat my quality 70% of the time
She doesn't like her photos but we can identify the bird...
My Kowa dealer, who is an honest guy, sums it up by saying that as I am not a "photographer" I am asking too much of the kit
Did you see this video by Simon Brumby
as I am not a photographer I didn't understand the difference between the TSN-PA7 (body only) and the TSN-DA10
Now I do
here is a photo I took with my Pixel 4a of the screen of the pc that Michèle uses to process her photos
This photo of the black-winged kite (
Elanus caeruleus) is fine for my id purposes but is not good enough as a "photograph"
It was an overcast day with little wind and the bird, which is about the size of a Cooper's Hawk, was about 1200m ( 4000 ft ?) away.
Of course we loose detail ; the red eye that show it to be an adult ...
But the photos I took with my Kowa set up are useless
HTH
BM