A colleague of mine is into his birdwatching and has been trying to get some ID images with his Opticron telescope coupled with a compact digital camera. He finds it a real pain to use, it takes so long to try to frame and focus etc that either the bird has gone or he just gets too frustrated to continue. He is not into photography at all (yet) but simply wants to make quick records of what he sees.
Anyway, can anyone out there tell me if it is possible to get a mount to attach a Digital SLR body (something cheap/secondhand EOS 300/350d)directly to the birding scope? Would he be able to focus the image directly through the viewfinder (manually of course), would the exposure systems work etc.
I have never used a scope myself and I'm not at all certain as to what advice I can give so any assistance would be appreciated.
Robert
(i) you are restricted to using a variation of an extension tube which replaces the eyepiece and usually gives a lens equivelent of 800mm at F11. ie 16x magnification approximately.
Given that a dirt cheap 500mm F8. Cat. mirror lens is already 10x magn. you are not getting a huge increase in performance sticking a DSLR onto a telescpe.
(ii) unlike compacts which have no mirror/pentaprism unit - the mirror 'slap' in a DSLR induces a huge amount of vibration on a standard 'birders' tripod set up
(iii) F11 = dark image viewfiunder = extremely difficult to focus.
Compact cameras give greater magnification as you continue to use the lens plus existing scope eyepiece, so you can get up to 180x magnification. (ie 3x 20x eyepeice). No mirror induced vibration.
Provided you can rig up or use a cable release digiscoping by compact camera is a better option.
A couple fo guys I know are heavily into digiscoping, they reckon on a 5% success rate, take 20 shots, change nothing between shots and 1 will come out in focus and sharp. It's the nature of the game you need to take a large number of images to get 1 decent image.
Thanks for all that Mike, I have passed this on to my mate. I for one would not have the patience to use that sort of set up. It's frustrating enough with good gear.
Cheers
Rob
Discussion
6 repliesAnyway, can anyone out there tell me if it is possible to get a mount to attach a Digital SLR body (something cheap/secondhand EOS 300/350d)directly to the birding scope? Would he be able to focus the image directly through the viewfinder (manually of course), would the exposure systems work etc.
I have never used a scope myself and I'm not at all certain as to what advice I can give so any assistance would be appreciated.
Robert
I think Andy Bright is the chap 'in the know', regarding this subject!
Don't know how to supply links, but a quick google search should track him down.
Alan
You might find this site useful too: http://www.digiscoping.co.uk/
Cheers; Wayne
(i) you are restricted to using a variation of an extension tube which replaces the eyepiece and usually gives a lens equivelent of 800mm at F11. ie 16x magnification approximately.
Given that a dirt cheap 500mm F8. Cat. mirror lens is already 10x magn. you are not getting a huge increase in performance sticking a DSLR onto a telescpe.
(ii) unlike compacts which have no mirror/pentaprism unit - the mirror 'slap' in a DSLR induces a huge amount of vibration on a standard 'birders' tripod set up
(iii) F11 = dark image viewfiunder = extremely difficult to focus.
Compact cameras give greater magnification as you continue to use the lens plus existing scope eyepiece, so you can get up to 180x magnification. (ie 3x 20x eyepeice). No mirror induced vibration.
Provided you can rig up or use a cable release digiscoping by compact camera is a better option.
A couple fo guys I know are heavily into digiscoping, they reckon on a 5% success rate, take 20 shots, change nothing between shots and 1 will come out in focus and sharp. It's the nature of the game you need to take a large number of images to get 1 decent image.
Mike
Cheers
Rob