Handheld digiscoping? (1 Viewer)

I used to digiscope with a camera that has a lens housing was quite a lot smaller than the inside of my scope's eyepiece. What I did was, search around the kitchen to find a bottle cap with an inside diameter slightly larger than the camera's lens housing. Buy some self adhesive velcro ( only using the soft bit ) line the inside of the bottle cap, and if nessessary the outside of the cap so its a snug fit inside the scope eyepiece, Then drill a suitable sized hole in the bottom of the cap. Then use trial and error to work out how far the lens need to be away from the eyepiece and pack it out accordingly. Its quick to use and the camera is always centred and the right distance away. There are pictures on another thread somewhere on here from a long time ago!

Found it, on this one I used insulating tape around the outside!

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=53692&highlight=bottle

looksharp65 said:

http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=2906089&postcount=13

This shot was handheld and the focal length equivalent would be about 2500 mm before cropping. And it's a Lumix TZ40 P&S camera.

//L

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Do you happen to have the EXIF data available? How did you manage exposure time short enough? 2500mm (35mm equivalent) focal length calls for really short time, handheld, and given the misarable light conditions I am surprised about the sharpness. Did you push ISO to extreme?

Tord said:

Do you happen to have the EXIF data available? How did you manage exposure time short enough? 2500mm (35mm equivalent) focal length calls for really short time, handheld, and given the misarable light conditions I am surprised about the sharpness. Did you push ISO to extreme?

Click to expand...

18M, ISO 200, -1.0 EV, F3.7, 1/125 s. I'm surprised as well. It was a "turbild". I used the display shutter release. The camera is sharp, as is the scope.
I applied a little digital sharpening in Windows Fotovisaren.

//L

EDIT: I realise that I miscalculated the equivalent focal length. The wide setting is 24 mm and I zoomed in about 1.5x, which makes 36 mm.
The equivalent focal length before cropping would be (36/50)*2500 = 1800 mm. Of course it's a lot more with such massive cropping.

Decent result considering 1800mm and 1/125s handheld... Does the camera you use have any built-in IS?

Tord said:

Decent result considering 1800mm and 1/125s handheld... Does the camera you use have any built-in IS?

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Indeed it has ... the TZ40 is a pocket 20x superzoom with 24-480 mm 35 mm equivalent focal length.
So it is quite useful even without the scope. If I use a 30x eyepiece and the least vignetting zoom is 30 mm, I get a focal length equivalent to
(30/50)*50*30 = 900 mm, so the gap between the camera as-is (480 mm) and the digiscoping setup (900 mm) is not abyss-like.

//L