Astrophotography adapter... (1 Viewer)

Ok I'm new to digiscoping; I don’t even have a scope yet!!!

Ive just been playing around with my camera and some binos for now...

Anyways to the point, just as I've been browsing around for equipment I’ve came across a couple of adapters used in astro photography (same principle really, strap a camera to a scope and take pictures...

Anyways here they are for you guys to take a look at...

Telescope house adapter

Orion SteadyPix Camera Mount

I own the telescope house adapter and I’m currently using it with a cool pix 4500 and an 8x40 pair of binos. Results are ok, a little fuzzy though as I don’t really have anything to stabilise the whole thing with (no tripod mount for binos)

Anyways just wanted to point out a few options that people may not have considered before.

I do actually intend to go on to buy the Orion camera mount to try that out as well. Looks like it can be set up and moved into position quite easily while still using the scope normally. Very cheap for a universal mount as well for those concerned about possible thread damage.

Anyways tell me what you guys think about these adapters if anyone has had any experience using them before or anything similar.

It looks like the swing-out -style brackets are gradually getting more attention - and for very good reasons. The brackets have the advantages of
1) being able to use variety of cameras
2) saving eye-relief (-> wider view)
3) possibility to easily use the scope for viewing

I am not sure, which scope you are planning to buy, but I would like to point out that at least the Zeiss, Swarovski and Leica scopes have usually very large eyepieces, which may limit the usability of the Orion adapter. The diameter of the "eyepiece-part" looks like it is shaped for smaller eyepiece-tubes. Have you seen the Opticron Universal Digital Camera Adapter [UDCA, 40849] http://www.swoptics.co.uk/view.asp?KEY=1489 - it is more expensive but looks a bit more stabile and accepts a wider range of eyepieces. On the other hand, someone on this forum warned against this adapter! The best bracket in terms of usability (does not limit the use of zoom and swings out far enough) is probably made by Zeiss, but it is really expensive.

Ilkka