Olympus E10 ...... ????

[advid]

... is it possible to put a scope or something for 'birding' onto an Olympus e10 ????

If yes - what adapter and scope is required ???

[Andy Bright]

From everthing I have heard from E10/20 users... No. I have heard of someone using a third-party eyepiece from the states and having partial success (Maxview 40... or see the digitalastronomy.com banner ad on here), but it really isn't a camera to contemplate for digiscoping. There is a very expensive 3x teleconverter for the E10... but total focal length is still poor for most bird photography.

Andy

[David Ellsworth]

I apologize for resurrecting such an old thread, but I couldn't resist...

It's actually possible to turn the E-10/E-20 into an excellent digiscope, if you disassemble a TCON-300 and use its rear element as an 51mm "eyepiece". Using that, I gave myself a 1200mm-equivalent* F/5.2 lens from an old Bushnell Spacemaster spotting scope (which is 440mm F/7.3). Here is my final design (http://www.pbase.com/qubit/image/61734608/original). (If anyone wants, I'll describe how I built it.)

It's a real joy doing TTL digiscoping. I can find a bird simply by centering the bird in my left eye with the viewfinder circle in my right eye, and manual focusing with the spotting scope's focus dial is a breeze. The only problem is that I can't focus closer than about 17 feet. I missed some bushtit shots because of that.

I took most of these bird photos (http://www.pbase.com/qubit/birds) with the above-described digiscope rig.

*Note that the E-10/20 lens combined with the digiscope rig yields an actual focal length of about 310mm, which given the E-10/20 sensor size is about 1200mm in 35mm-equivalent terms. Using the TCON-300 itself yields 103mm actual = 410mm equivalent. Without any add-on lens, at full zoom the E-10/20 is 35.3mm actual = 140mm equivalent.