can I just use a DSLR without any adaptor for digiscoping (1 Viewer)

Hi, I'm sure this has been asked many times before, but I just wanted to know if I could use a DSLR camera with Swaro ats80 scope simply by holding the lens up to the eyepiece in the way I do (on a very hit and miss basis) with a compact digital at 3x zoom.

I was imagining just using a 55mm lens say and hoping I could rest it against the eyepiece in a way that you can't with the external little lenses of the compacts and thus reduce the shake and blurriness. I might be wrong but I also thought that maybe the increased amount of shutter spped options etc on a DSLR would also help.

But would this work as I describe here or am I barking up the wrong tree totally?

You can do it but you would probably be better off in manual mode than using one of the other options, especially if hand holding. A 55mm lens might be a bit powerful making shutter speeds too low, something like a 28mm or 35mm would be better. Instead of resting the camera on the eyepiece it's quite easy just to hand hold the camera a fraction off of the eyepiece and take the photo and because you aren't touching the scope there will be much less vibration.

Paul.

Well, it certainly is possible and in some ways easier than with a compact.
If you have something like a smaller DSLR, say a Canon 1000d and the normal 28-55 kit zoom lens, then you can put the lens on manual focus (it is an external focusser) and zoom up to about 37mm - this is minimum zoom you need on this system to remove vignetting completely.

You can then use your left hand to hold the camera by the objective, flush up against the eyecup (centered, of course) by gripping both the lens and the ocular at the same time. With a little DSLR, this is not as hard as it sounds.

Now use your right hand to focus the scope and operate the shutter release.

Two good tips to get better images are to use aperture priority and open the aperture to full (fastest shutter speed), and use liveview mode to digitally zoom in to tweak the focus and taking the photos in liveview will help eliminate shutter flap.

To state the obvious, this is never going to be as good as a good adapter like the Swaro UCA, but you can certainly get some nice results.