Charles

I could have said "Thank you for doing my sums" but you went much further than that and reminded me of the formula which I had forgotten once again (at least one other has spelt this out for me before and it does help me, thanks) ...

Any ideas on spider braces or 3rd party handheld (?) brackets for bird flight footage, Charles, please ?? I will have to be able to zoom in and out and rely on the standard viewfinder (because there is no time to reframe etc.)

Most of what I know about these brackets (DVRig etc) is from walking past them at trade shows, and hearing people talk about them in this forum. See the "Support Your Local Camera" section for threads on them. Unfortunately I don't have enough hands-on to be able to recommend a particular one. Also my experience is limited with shooting birds, so I can only guess at the pecularities and needs of that particular challenge.

I do have a concept in mind that may help greatly with handholding these types of cameras, but haven't had time to build prototypes to see if it will actually work or not. One of these days.

Dear Charles,

I thought your post was helpful as it expained how they come up with the zoom multiplication factor, such as 20x.

I believe that Brendan also thought your post was helpful.

Tele-extenders
 

There are two tele-extenders available for the A1, from Schnieder and 16x9, that extend the A1's focal range to about 1000mm.