Extreme digiscoping at 150 magnification. Best settings Fuji F31?

[Bourouba]

I want to take photographs of peregrine falcons that are living up on a cliff near my home in Quebec Canada. The distance between my scope and the birds is about 800 meters. I do not expect great sharp pictures from such a distance but would like to do the best possible. I am very new to digiscoping and tried my equipment yesterday with the falcons. It was a sunny day with moderate winds. Below is the best picture I was able to shoot under these circumstances. What kind of settings would you think are best for extreme disgiscoping like this. My camera is a Fuji F31 and my scope is the Swarovski AT80 with the 20-60 zoom eye piece. I have an adapter made by a local person. I am not happy with it but it is steady and does the job.

I wonder if the ISO is important in this situation. What about aperture and speed? Macro focus or not? Etc. All ideas will be appreciated and tested.

Thanks

Bourouba

[jourdaj]

Bourouba,

That's not a bad picture given the distances you speak about. My advice would be to set the camera on self-timer (2-seconds) and shoot Continuous (Top-three). Set your camera to A/S (Aperture mode) at ISO's in the 200-800 range. Photograph only on sunny days, and consider using your Movie Mode for recording. I set my F30 up and have gotten surprisingly good videos from distances better than 150 yards.
This is a Snowy Owl from better than 150yds on an overcast, windy day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufhP-5kH4HU
This is the same owl from about 50yds on a partly sunny, windy day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvfWeCWDnRE
The image quality is much better than on YouTube, which compresses severely the original 640X480 into a compressed 320X240 mode.

Best of luck!

Jerry

[Bourouba]

Jerry - Thank you so much for your response. I appreciate the video idea. I haven't experimented with that option yet. What would be the advantage? (Besides the obvious possibility of making a movie) Will that help in getting a better image? I will also test different ISO and see what kind of difference it makes.

Both of your videos are great. An excellent idea.

Bourouba

[yossi]

I took some videos via my telescopes but I was using a Sony DV camera. The results are very good, and if you want to take video - this is the best way.
On the shot there's some purple fringes, indicating some residual CA of the camera lens or the scope (a non-HD scope may show it).
Shooting at an 800m distance is very tricky. You need a very stable tripod, excellent weather conditions (the thick air layer between the camera and the subject works like a huge softening filter).
Under those conditions, your shot is great.
I always shoot wide open, I do not use the macro option as AF may take longer, I either use AF or infinity MF and focus with the scope. I zoom in with camera first and then with the scope. Beyond 5000-9000 mm combined focal length (depends on the scope used) optics and weather become too hostile for digiscoping.
Up to 3000mm is useful in my setups (equivalent to X60 magnification).
This focal length in practically unachieveable with a DSLR and a sane-priced telephoto lens.

[Modular]

Hello,

Actually it's not a bad picture all considering, I can see fringing and the
usual softness but i'm sure you could work on it better after in Ps,
I had a quick try myself but i have no idea what distance this is,
The picture is from my Living room window ... I've shown a picture from
what i can see from the Window and then a picture of the Rabbit i took
and where it was ... Hope that make's sense lol,
I don't have the same camera and scope but the setting's i used was
50 Iso, Macro on, Continuous, ... The scope was zoomed between 40 and 50,
The view was taken last Year but the Rabbit was taken Day's ago ... After i
took the Rabbit i had forgotten to take the view so you could see
the distance lol, The Rabbit has been cropped and darkened as it was a bit
light, Like Yossi said ... The weather play's a lot in the quality, This was'nt
the best condition's i took the Rabbit and i was using a window clamp so it
was'nt very steady, Good luck and keep us posted on your progress,
Take care,
John,