SECTION HEAD
The
Mission
- Learn how to calibrate
and use Nikon’s DF-M1
dot sight
Time
- 20 minutes
Skill level
- Intermediate
Kit needed
- Dot sight
- Tripod
- Telephoto lens
(or superzoom camera)
ESSENTIAL GEAR SKILLS
P rojec t^ three:^ Essen tial^ gea
r skills
WATCH ON YOUR
DISC OR ONLINE
http://www.bit.ly/NPhoto110
Shooting fish in a barrel
Mike Harris scopes out the Nikon DF-M1 dot sight
at Langford Lakes Nature Reserve
The longer your lens, the harder
it is to sight and keep up with
your subject. Small movements
become exaggerated at higher
magnifications and this can
make photographing erratic
subjects, such as birds, even
more challenging.
The DF-M1 dot sight is built to
help improve your accuracy, and
although this super-specialist
attachment won’t appeal to
everyone, it’s worth looking intoif you spend most of your time
searching for (or losing) faraway
subjects. You’d be forgiven for
thinking the DF-M1 is a piece of
military hardware. The pop-up
dot sight slots into the hotshoe
of a camera, weighs very little
and folds down when not in use.
In practice, the sight allows
you to pinpoint the centre of your
frame, without narrowing your
vision through the viewfinder.
This makes it much easier to findand track fast-moving or erratic
subjects without losing them.
We used the DF-M1 with both
the Nikon P1000’s eye-watering
125x optical zoom and a Z 7, with
the Nikon AF-S 200-500mm
f/5.6E ED VR. For the DF-M1 to
function properly you need to
calibrate the position of the
reticle, so it matches the framing
of your viewfinder/rear LCD
screen perfectly. Thankfully, this
tutorial is bang on target! Main^image:^©^Getty