Digiscoping with Canon 20D??

[emigrant]

Hello together,
... I want to start Digiscoping but I haven't got a idea what I have to buy. Can somebody help me with this please!?!?!?

I have add to links for Digiscops:

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/?/binsandscopes/digiscoping/leica.html
#dlux21



http://www.warehouseexpress.com/?/binsandscopes/spotting_scopes/kenko.
html


Somebody nows them? Maybe somebody have some information about them for me!!

Thank you very much for your help!

Carsten

[kevindurose]

Make sure you get the right gear. My advise would be get a Kowa 823 with either the 27x Wa lens or the 32xwa lens. You will have to be quick though as this gear is being replaced by the 880 series scopes which is twice as expensive and produces very similar digiscoped shots. You might be able to get reasonable shots by holding your 20d with a standard/wide angle lens to the eyepiece?

Although my advise would be get a Nikon p5100/5000 or a fuji E900. You will be able to buy or make an adapter/spacer to centralise or fix the camera to your scopes eye piece.

try

www.srb-griturn.com


Then use no more than half of the cameras optical zoom and the lowest ISO possible (I never use any other than 50 myself)


and you should be away and getting good shots.

Kev

[Neil]

Carsten,
There's plenty of good discussion in this Forum of the pros and cons of various technologies. Have a look at this site. The Portuguese digiscopers are all using the Canon 350D with scopes.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/digiscopers/pool/

Neil

[Texun]

Niel, are the Portuguese digiscopers using their scopes as telephoto lenses or are they really digiscoping with SLR's? If they are digiscoping, what eyepiece-camera lens combinations are they using? I am asking only because there is currently a dearth of Portuguese digiscopers here in the Fort Worth area.

[Neil]

From what I've gleaned they use a combination of technologies. Some use a 50 mm lens plus eyepiece ,some the Zeiss SLR adapter. Neil.

[Sandpiper]

I use a 20D with a 38-76 zoom lens (52mm filter thread) attached to my Swarovski scope with a DCA adaptor. With the scope zoom eyepiece set to 20x I can utilise most of the zoom range on the lens. By setting the camera lens to 50mm, higher magnifications on the scope are possible without vignetting. Providing the combo is stable I can achieve reasonable results by setting the camera lens to infinity and manually focusing the scope.

Attached are two examples taken with the scope zoom set at 20x. The Tree Sparrow shot is full frame, the Heron slightly cropped.

[kevindurose]

DSLR digiscoping looks to be the way forward. Has anyone used any other lenses. I did borrow a 50mm lens in conjunction with my 20d, and offered it up to my kowa scope with 32x eyepiece. There was no vignetting, but this combo gave a lot of power, perhaps a bit too much to be honest. has anyone tried a non zoom lens lower than 50mm (canon).

[Paul Corfield]

Also look at the large range of good quality apo/semi apo astro scopes coming onto the market at the moment. On their own they make a great prime lens in the region of 800mm F6 depending on the scope. Add a 2X barlow lens and you get about the same power as you would get with a 50mm lens going through an eyepiece but you get a higher shutter speed with the barlow because there's way less glass in the light path and it's much less bulky.

Did a couple of photos as an example. Photo on left is with 50mm camera lens going through an eyepiece and photo on right is just going through a barlow lens. Also a photo of a Robin taken today wth the barlow while I was doing these tests. Cost of my set up minus the camera is around £250.

Paul.

[kevindurose]

Paul, the problem is many of us are primarily birders as opposed to digiscopers. By the looks of your shots your kit it looks great. But I could never carry an extra scope especially i'm already carrying a sigma 500 on top of everything else.

Anyone here used canon DSLR on a kowa/swarvoski with birding eyepiece????

[Paul Corfield]

To be fair though the guy that started this thread wants to start digiscoping and that was what I was replying to. No need for an extra scope, just use an erecting prism (45° or 90°) and a zoom eyepiece.

Paul.

[awallace]

Carsten - I am using a Kowa TSN-821 scope with 32x eyepiece, onto which I mount a Canon 20D. There are two ways of doing this:

1) remove the eyepiece and replace it with the Kowa TSN-PA2C photo adapter, which turns the scope into a 850mm f/10.4 prime lens
2) leave the eyepiece in place and use the TSN-DA1A photo adapter. Screw this into the threads of a 50mm f/1.8 (or similar) lens and mount the camera onto it. This creates a focal length of 50x33=1600mm (I think!)

I did a test of the various options and posted the results in another thread (http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=100878). Both options work well.

[Paul Corfield]

Carsten - I am using a Kowa TSN-821 scope with 32x eyepiece, onto which I mount a Canon 20D. There are two ways of doing this:

1) remove the eyepiece and replace it with the Kowa TSN-PA2C photo adapter, which turns the scope into a 850mm f/10.4 prime lens
2) leave the eyepiece in place and use the TSN-DA1A photo adapter. Screw this into the threads of a 50mm f/1.8 (or similar) lens and mount the camera onto it. This creates a focal length of 50x33=1600mm (I think!)

I did a test of the various options and posted the results in another thread (http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=100878). Both options work well.

There's also the conversion to the 35mm equivalent to take into account. The sensor on a dslr is smaller than 35mm film so you need to multiply by 1.5 to get the 35mm equiv. A 50mm lens on a dslr behaves like a 75mm lens would on a 35mm slr. To get the real world figure in mm would you multiply your 32X eyepiece by 75 or 50? In tests I've done I'd be inclined to go with the 75.

In my test above I used a 50mm lens through a 24mm eyepiece on a 480mm focal length scope. Then I used the scope prime focus with a 2X barlow lens. At the same range my 50mm lens photo has slightly more zoom than the 2X barlow. Doing the maths if I were to use 50mm as the figure instead of 75mm then the photo should have less zoom than my 2X barlow but this isn't the case in the actual photos.

480mm scope becomes 720mm prime lens on dslr. Plus 2X barlow becomes 1440mm

480mm with 24mm EP = 20X zoom. 20X50 would only be 1000mm so based on that the photo should have less zoom than the barlow lens version but it actually has slightly more. Using 75mm as the figure then 75X20 = 1500mm which would be more like the photo represents.

Paul.