Minox DCM 5.0 Digital camera, monitor and eyepiece all in one - affordable digiscoping for everyone!

By Terry Herndon   

When Doug from Cameraland sent me one of these to review I was very excited about the chance to see what kind of quality pictures I could take of animals; specifically antelope. I already knew that the Minox 5.0 would come well packaged and requiring a signature because I have purchased a few items from cameraland before. The day it came I immediately opened it and started to read the instructions (note that this is a must before you even touch the camera) I could understand the way the system worked and I was eager to apply it to my Swarovski Spotting scope—just for reference I have one of the older scopes and the system fit up was easy as can be with no issues. I attached the system to my spotting scope and set the scope on a tripod which is absolutely a must for quality pictures. I then took the scope and Minox 5.0 outside to take pictures of a few birds by my home—I have to say I was not very impressed with the system at this point but it really wasn’t the systems fault it was me as I will explain in time here. It is very important to know how to zoom in and out and you will see a major difference in the quality of the pictures the more you zoom in on a subject. The remote control that is included with the Minox 5.0 must be used for any kind of photo that you want to take because the vibration of the spotting scope attached to a tripod will cause a lot of blurry photo’s. I can tell you that once you use this little jewel you will like it very much but if you get discouraged easily you may not want to buy one. It takes time to use any product correctly and I have to tell you that it does pay dividends if you spend a few weeks playing with this system. The price of this Minox 5.0 is so reasonable you may be able to buy that better spotting scope and leave the more popular and more expensive digiscoping systems in the store. The price on these is $199.99. If you need to buy a spotting scope check out the assortment that are available and ask Doug or any of his folks any question—they are all topnotch! http://www.cameralandny.com/digiscoping/digiscoping.pl?page=minoxdec5 I took a road trip to find a few antelope to use as models and I found a few that liked the camera: First picture is with regular mode with no zoom:

 Here is the second picture with a 50% zoom:

As you can see it begins to get grainy but as a guide or a person wanting to look at an animal up close and personal you just can not get any better than this. This buck is a toad! Here are a couple more pictures: One without zoom and one with full zoom. I had to crop these down so they would somewhat fit the screen. This is a different buck that will not score nearly as high as the first buck in this review. I know this because of the Minox 5.0 and the pictures that it gives me.

Full zoom:

And this one with normal zoom:

I was using a window mount for my spotting scope and it turned out pretty well for what I wanted to see. I think a sturdy tripod will help a bunch. It would also help if you could find an animal that didn’t constantly move like these antelope do. As I stated before the only reason I had bad pictures at first was my entire fault. You must read the instructions and you must use the remote control to take pictures. If you touch the 5.0 on the tripod you will get vibration and movement and the pictures will look horrible. Once you understand the way this system works you will love it. I can look at these pictures and tell you without doubt that this buck will make the Boone and Crockett books and if you draw a antelope tag in Arizona where I live you really need to shoot the best buck you can because it may be the only tag you have in a lifetime!  For the price of this system ($199.99) I can not see how you can go wrong for all of your scouting needs. If you are looking for magazine quality pictures then this is not for you—however, if you are looking for a scouting tool then I would say this will suit you very well.