Digiscoping ! hmm interesting...

Being a travel and nature enthusiast, it is always difficult to experience the beauty of wildlife in their natural habitat with naked eyes and I have been living with this limit for sometime now. A simple solution for this is to get a binocular which I have been getting and getting for a few months in plan, but never went out to get one. But finally when I had bought tickets for a concert with the seats at the farthest end I have to buy one at least now, else I am never going to buy it. So there it started with a Google search venture to get a perfect compact travel binocular. While researching and reading reviews about few models the internet quiet efficiently introduced me to Spotting scopes (if u had never heard of it before, don’t worry even it was the same for me a week back). To put it simple they are kind of Binoculars but for higher magnifications mostly used to watch wildlife. From Binoculars my interest now shifted to learning and researching about spotting scopes.

Researching and reading about spotting scopes and their reviews I hit on some great close-up pictures of birds. Pictures in a spotting scope review? How is that possible? I was wondering, but soon I was introduced to an interesting word "Digiscoping". Yes, the picture was taken using the concept called Digiscoping, One of the latest emerging photography techniques. Well, to make it more interesting it is the word coined with the combination of Digital Camera and Spotting Scope. Being an amateur photographer I had never been able to get a close-up picture of a bird, and obviously this concept interested me and my interest now shifted towards learning about Digiscoping.

It seemed to be a simple stuff just requiring a Digital Camera and a Spotting Scope, but on reading more and more about it the fine details of the technique was too much for me to take. To put is short, every single piece of equipment involved in the digiscoping process has to be perfect and compliment each other. Now that’s tough. There were too many fine details to be looked at to get a perfect digiscoped picture. But the disappointing part is that whatever you try you simply will not get a professional level picture. But the greatest advantage is that you can get a good quality picture for 1/10th the price of what you can do with a professional camera equipments and reach out to distances which the cameras can not reach. I am not in to professional photography or I am not going to sell my photographs, I just want to make a little collection for myself with some fun time playing with the equipments and so I decided to give it a try.

Though the cost of taking those kind of pictures is going to be 1/10th of the professional capturing device prices, it was way high for me as it was just a trial experiment for me. The Spotting Scopes ranged from hundred dollars to Thousands and so did the cameras. But more than these there were many other accessories to consider about like tripod, Camera to Scope adaptor, etc etc… it seemed I still have to shell out some money for my experiment. The only advantage I had is that the camera used for digiscoping can be only a compact point and shoot camera with less than 4x zoom. This gave me something to cheer about to start with as I already have two of them.

My intention was to keep the cost as low as possible and the lowest cost which someone had put in to make the digiscoping work was around 600$. Oops this made me think again. Should I really spend that much for a trial which I am not sure will work or not. Well I decided to give it a try as I am going to go for the least possible option. After Spending some hours reading about the experiences and technique I found that the core logic is to keep the Camera Lens dead parallel to the Spotting Scope lens. Saying is easy but this one in practical is not so easy under budget. Let’s see how it went for me.

I started searching the internet for the best, compact, good optics, easy to use spotting scope and of course with so many goods the price was not so good for me. So I stopped searching for best and started searching for the one which had good customer review and after some hours of search found a model with very good customer reviews and in my budget. It did not have the best optics, it did not have recommendation for digiscoping, but it had good reviews which made me go for it though one review mentioned that the eyepiece is too small for digiscoping. Being on a budget e3vey small detail needs to be given much attention and I measured the lens diameter of my camera to see if there is a chance for it to fir the scope and it seemed one of my cameras might. Well it is just a possibility which can turn against me. Being on budget, I have to risk it and I did. Went on and ordered for the Scope online. It is Tasco World Class 20608045 Model, costed me $150 with shipping. I did not bother to get a good tripod which is as essential they say “The scope is only as good as the tripod” because this scope came with a small tripod obviously not good, to be precise bad and I knew that from the reviews. But I though this is sufficient for my initial experiment and settled with it for now.

This was my first scope of any kind and it took a while for me to figure out how it works, same went with the tripod and after a while managed to fit the scope on the tripod and after some fight managed to focus the scope on a still object inside the house successfully. Well, was happy it worked, but I already realized the truth in “The scope is only as good as the tripod”. Now the next stage is to see if my Camera can fit the Scope. The Scopes eye piece diameter was small as mentioned and I was worried. I grabbed my camera and tried it on manually to see if there is any chance of using it.

The scope and Camera has to be compatible with each other, it has to be a marriage between the scope and the camera with the ring being the Adaptor, if the couple are not compatible the marriage just fails, so do the digiscoping, it just fails with nothing left to do!. Though my setup had some alignment problems and fringing effects it worked….. Yes it worked.. and I was so happy that I can at least integrate the Scope to my Camera. The Camera I use is Kodak M1093 IS which I got for 100$ a year back. This has been a wonderful camera for its price and it had put my higher priced much hyped Sony as a backup. Not to mention I tired my Sony camera and it was not compatible with the scope and can not be used with it in whatever matter I try. I was glad at least one of them works for my experiment. But wait that’s not all, none of the equipment should shake to get a good picture and forget about capturing moving objects which I can think of only after getting a better tripod.

The first thing is to get an adaptor to fix the camera to the scope. The adaptors were costing around $50 minimum and by chance I landed on a video explaining how to make it at home with just a plastic bottle. It was mush better option for me and decided to give it a try. After fighting with the plastics, tapes, scissors for around 3 hours and lot of mess-up I managed to make one adaptor that just fits for now. But soon I realized that I can use it only for taking pictures of fixed focused objects, as it was made to fit over the zoom ring of the scope and after fitting it I can not use the Scope’s zoom to focus the object. And there is no way to get over it with homemade adaptor which made me sad. But I wanted to give it a try to see if my Camera can take some pictures with the adaptor. After making some fine fitting adjustments I was able to place the camera on the scope with the use of the adaptor hands free and in focus. All I have to do now is to click the button to get the picture. Well this was a long process to make sure the cameras lens is exactly parallel to the Scopes lens and even a slight error is going to make the digiscoping impossible. But somehow with some tweaks the adaptor just worked with them to give proper focus. No matter what you do the image you see with your eyes in the scope will not be the same captured by the camera. Tough I was happy I made it work; I can only photograph a stationary object without a proper tripod and a proper adaptor. So I decided to put it aside and go to sleep.

But soon while having my dinner I realized that I can capture the moon !!! to check if my setup works. Lucky the moon was out there visible from our window and it was a clear night. After some time focusing and learning to use the scope I managed to focus at the moon and my first impression was… WOW, that is so amazing, I was stunned with the view I got through the scope. I never imagined of this and I had never seen the moon so close live. That was an exiting moment for me. I forgot about taking the picture and stated watching the moon for sometime. I was so exited I even showed it to my friends with whom I share the house. It was a stunning view. I would have been happy with the scope even if the digiscoping thing did not work out . Soon I put the adaptor on and attached the camera to the scope to see if I can click that stunning shot. After trying different settings and adjustments with the camera and refocusing the scope for around an hour I managed to get some. As I knew this limitation I was able to accept it. I had used all possible combinations Timer, Focus, ISO, and Shutter Speed in the camera to make it steady and take a good shot.

I was so exited to see the results and so I transferred the pictures from the camera to my laptop at midnight. The moon was gone by that time. Out of around 30 pictures one, just one reproduced half the quality of what I saw with my eyes through the scope. But I was so happy and impresses. My experiment succeeded and now I can take some more digiscoped pictures though I need to buy a proper tripod and an adaptor to continue with better digiscoping. I just spent $150, the cost of the scope and it worked out for me somehow which made me more exited. Now its time for me to go and Google out for a better adaptor and Tripod. Here is the unaltered picture directly from my camera of the digiscoped moon. I know there are lots of software’s out there to make it look even better after post processing, I will try them out for my future journey in digiscoping, but for now I am very much happier in posting the unaltered original picture here which is also what is being suggested by my conscience!