Spotting Scope Photography Help

[lgibson]

Hi I was wonderig if someone could help me. I recently bought a Bushnell 15x45 Natureview spotting scope. It came with the camera adapter and I bought a T Mount adapter. The scope works fine and the camera works fine (minolta Maxxum 400si) but not togther. Everything is blurry through the camera and very dark. What can I do to correct this and is it even possible to use an AF camera with a spotting scope? I've turned the camera on full manual. Or should I purchase a cheap manual 35mm slr? Also I have tried spotting the scope and putting my Polaroid PDC 700 digital camera to the eye piece and all I get is a circle of light surrounded by black. I know that it's not the perfect digiscoping camera but I gave it a shot lol. Anyway any help would be great. Thanks
LRG
:hippy:

[Andy Bright]

Hi,
On behalf of all the moderators and admin at BirdForum a big welcome to you. We hope you enjoy your time here.
Is that Fargo in Nebraska? Yah?

Anyway, things always look very dark through the viewfinder of an slr attached to a scope.... I found it very difficult to focus the scope onto the subject because of this darkness and that was on a good quality 77mm scope. Your camera's AF is unlikely to work with this sort of darkness, so pure manual focus is the only alternative.

It slighlty depends upon what you want from your shots (record shots for web/small prints or genuine high quality artisitc images)
If it's the latter, then I really would consider saving some money for a long lens for your slr, then you will get all the benefits of AF.

If you are content with web/monitor images, maybe you could pursue digiscoping with your current scope and a more suitable camera. I'm totally unfamiliar with your camera, if you are getting vignetting (circle of light surrounded by black) when the camera is fully zoomed in, then there's not a great deal of hope..... though minor vignetting can be cropped away in-computer.
Hope that helps a bit,
Andy