Amici/correct image prisms

Hi, I am thinking about these for birdwatching. I have never used one or looked through one. Can someone with experience in choosing and using one kindly give me some hints?
-which brands are good
-any optical drawbacks?
-other thoughts?
-if I use this in a finder for astronomy, any issues?

Thanks very much,
Ivan

Ivan Ong said:

Hi, I am thinking about these for birdwatching. I have never used one or looked through one. Can someone with experience in choosing and using one kindly give me some hints?
-which brands are good
-any optical drawbacks?
-other thoughts?
-if I use this in a finder for astronomy, any issues?

Thanks very much,
Ivan

Ivan: Just a few quick comments...

- I think that even the best Amici prisms degrade the image at high magnifications. If you look at one and see how it works, well, it is no surprise. Personally I use a star diagonal, the birds are looking the wrong way but they are not standing on their heads...

- For the widefield, consider the clear aperture, in general the clear aperture of a correct image diagonal is restricted.

- Bottom line for me... I paid good money to have pretty good color free optics. I paid good money to have some pretty good eyepieces, some of them provide nice clean widefield views, some of them provide nice high power views and of course there are several in between....

I am just not willing to mess up those good images just so the image is correctly oriented right to left... the bird doesn't know and probably doesn't care and I adapted long ago to the left-right reversed image.

Your mileage may vary.

jon

Ivan Ong said:

Hi, I am thinking about these for birdwatching. I have never used one or looked through one. Can someone with experience in choosing and using one kindly give me some hints?
-which brands are good
-any optical drawbacks?
-other thoughts?
-if I use this in a finder for astronomy, any issues?

Thanks very much,
Ivan

I have used the Baader 2" extensively. For magnifications used in birding it will work just fine and you will be able to track a subject as it moves. If you are planning on doing high magnification imaging then a high quality star diagonal might work better although I have never attempted daytime imaging with the Baader amici or a standard high quality star diagonal. For night-time use, I have found the amici prism to work just fine at low magnifications and has been mentioned, for low power star-hopping with a Dobsonian it is wonderful.

For the astronomical purposes part, a half binocular makes a good inexpensive low power correct image finder.