Photogtaphy using spotting scopes or telescopes

Hi I am from Romania (a country in Europe) I bought a spotting scope from Celestron (ED80)- it will be shipped next week. In the meanwhile I tried to take some pictures using my Olympus E-510 and an old telescope of mine MAK 90 mm. They are out of focus and blurry- why? I set the timer at 2 seconds to get rid of vibrations- maybe the shutter make the mirror inside the Mak flip - can you enlight me ? Have you ever tried to take pictures with a MAK ?

Hi Mircea, I've never used a spotting scope to photograph. I have seen photo's taken with scopes and have never seen a high quality image. Several people use them in yellowstone to photograph wolves but they don't use the images professionaly. With the technology changing continually it may be possible but I'm not aware of it.

Birders call this "digi-scoping" and have worked out remarkably good techniques. You might try goodling the term and look for tutorials on some of the birding sites. I've been absolutely amazed by some of the shots local birders get using their spotting scopes and pocket digital cameras.

A good digiscoping image can be spectacular. most of the people i know who are using the technique use a Nikon coolpix 990 or 995. There are people here on NPN who do this, and I hope they will see this and pipe up.

Good luck and have fun learning -

Sandy r

I can't help specifically, but you could try Andy Bright's website http://www.digiscoped.com/ for info on digi-scoping or there are dedicated digi-scoping forums in the photography section on http://www.birdforum.net. Good luck!

I've done a lot of "digiscoping" and it works very well. It all depends on the system. From my personal experience a DSLR is leaps ahead of a point and shoot when properly mated to a telescope. I've used Nikon DSLRs from a D70 to a D200 with a BORG 76ED, IMHO one of the best telescope systems ever invented. You can see some shots on the following links:

Astro:

http://www.josesuro.com/gallery/1168862/1/54602119/Original

Birding:

http://www.josesuro.com/gallery/2791798/1/131729249/Original

http://www.josesuro.com/gallery/2791726/1/141804177/Original

Hope this helps,

Jose

I use a scope like yours, ED80 but the skywatcher version. I find the quality to be excellent, most of the bird photos on my website (fernandobatista.smugmug.com) were done with it, even some of the flight shots. About the photos coming out blurry or OOF, I think that has to do with technique, using a scope like a mak isn't easy, they're too long and too slow, keeping a scope like that steady requires a very good tripod and tecnique. On the ED80 it will be easier, I use mine with TCs a lot and I have no problems in having sharp images.

Thanks to all of you for your help. I have very much appreciated that.
All the best for 2008.
All the sites posted here are awesome. I hope that some day I will achieve such results- maybe:)
Mircea