Digiscoping

[Digiscoper62]

Hi,

Just interested to hear opinions on Digiscoping outfits.
What is your favourite combo (camera /scope/ bracket etc).

I had a lot of success with the Fuji F30 and Hawke Endurance scope.
I am waiting on delivery of a Hilkinson 85mm scope and will publish the results on my website (when the hosting company decide to fix the outage ;-) )

Because I cannot afford the Lieca and Swaro scopes I have tried quite a few budget setups and have also had some great results, I am hoping to add these to my website and if enough interest is shown to Digiscoping here I will also post them on this forum.

Is Digiscoping popular here? I have asked for a seperate section but told there has to be shown interest so if you think there should be a seperate section let them know

cheers

[Richard Costin]

I attended a talk at the WWT in London with Chris Packham and Nikon were there, really trying to push their digiscoping products.

It's not really my thing, but they seemed to have a good range of products that worked well together, and Chris spoke quite well of their system.

I'm sure the Nikon site has some more information!

Rich.

[John]

I'm not sure how many digiscopers are on WAB but I used to be the main one, although I have now converted mainly to DSLR.

I still use my digiscoping outfit every now and again as certain birds can be too far for the DSLR set up, plus my CP4500 can do short 35 second movie clips which can come in useful.

You say you have had great results using budget set ups. If you have you have been very fortunate as usually you need good light to capture your subject, something cheap scopes are not capable of.

I use my Nikon CP4500 coupled to my scope using an old Kowa (which I used with my old Kowa 824) attachment to secure the camera to my Swarovski STS80 HD and I have a Gallery dedicated to my Digiscoped photos on my website (link shown at the bottom).

I doubt if there is enough of us to warrant a separate Gallery, as it isn't as popular with the photographers as the DSLR set up is. Far more photographers are submitting images from that set up than from digiscoping so I would have thought a Gallery devoted to it was a none starter.

Going back to the type of sets up to use. Using a cheap scope doesn't work in my opinion. The single biggest factor in digiscoping is the light content and a cheap scope just doesn't hack it in that department. You need quality glass to bring as much light through your telescope to your camera, especially if you use a zoom lens as I do. I would also recommend nothing less than a 75mm scope (80+ is even better). Anything less and you are struggling to get enough light in to get camera speeds up. Bad light means slow speeds. Slow speeds means problems in getting detailed images.

I can't speak about cameras as I have only ever used the Nikon CP995 and the CP4500 and I find the latter to be an excellent camera both for digiscoping and also Macro shots for my Moth photography (which is also in its own Gallery on my site).

Those are only my opinions of course, others might differ, but if you are getting good results with your current set up why change. If not then some investment is needed to upgrade at least your scope.

John

[tristanba]

Digiscoping was particularly popular before the price of dSLRs came down. And lots of birders had telescopes anyway, so it was a cheap approach. I used to digiscope regularly but ended up frustrated I couldn't take flight shots, or photograph small active birds like warblers. However, the magnification you get is incredible and in the UK, where it's often hard to get close to birds, it's a good option. However, I think digiscoping will always be viewed as a way of getting a record image rather than a high quality photograph, even though I've seen lots of excellent images and have some of my own.

It still amazes me that you can couple two pieces of optical technology which were not designed to work together and take printable pictures. I use a Swarovski 65HD with a Coolpix 995 and the Swarovski adaptor, and couldn't recommend this system highly enough.

Cheers
Tristan