Canon SLR on Pantax PF-100ED (1 Viewer)

Hello,

I'm quite new in the game of digiscoping.

I have a Canon XSi and expect to buy a Pantax PF-100ED, but it seem to be difficult to get this set up working for digiscoping.
Some forum talk about the lack of possible focus and they end with no solutions.

Sended email to Pantax with no answer...
The PF-CA35 is $$$ and act as a barlow, which down fstop to 12.0
Even with a K adapter, it's not the right solution for me.

Someone suggest me to use MaxView DSLR adapter to make eyepiece projection.
http://www.scopetronics.com/dslradapters.htm

Do anyone ever try this type of eyepieces project, what are the pro and cons.

Anyone have a solution to make Canon SLR working with Pantax spotting scope ?

Best regards,

Same kind of thread:
http://www.opticsplanet.com/msgboard/post-33129.html#33129
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=104879

I've been trying out eyepiece projection all this week with my Canon XSi and shall post a report on my findings so far, probably tomorrow morning (UK time). EDIT - probably Friday morning now.

The pros are - you can get a wide range of magnification from a single eyepiece by varying the distance of the camera from the eyepiece. The magnifiction can be very low or very high. For instance, today I filled the frame with a small bird at 100m range using a 100X magnification from a 6mm Plossl eyepiece.

The cons are - distortion. It will take some trial and error to find an eyepiece that works well without too much edge distortion. Eyepieces generally produce a curved field of view so when the image hits the ccd in the camera they produce a photo that gets quite soft/smeared towards the edges. I've tried out 6 eyepieces this week with varying degrees of success. The good thing about the Pentax scope is you will be able to try many eyepieces as it takes standard astro type eyepieces. I've got some more eyepieces to try later this week. The orthoscopic types I have tried this week have been the best. They produce a good sharp image and are quite sharp right to the edges of the photo. Only trouble I have at the minute is the eyepieces I have are too powerful. Even with a small bird at 10m all I can fit in the frame is a head. see example below. I've got a much lower power orthoscopic eyepiece arriving tomorrow or Friday.

One way to get rid of the distortion is to move the camera further away from the eyepiece so the the distortion falls outside of the camera ccd. Only trouble with moving the camera further back is that magnification ramps up very quickly so it's probably best to start with a medium to low power eyepiece.

Here's an example of a couple of photos I took today. First one is at 10m range and this is uncropped to give an idea of how much the bird fills the frame.

2nd photo is with a 24mm Plossl eyepiece from 35m range and this shows the distortion that Plossl eyepieces are prone to. The middle of the photo is pretty good though so it could be cropped down if needs be.

Paul.

Canon SLR on Pantax's PF-100ED

Well,

many thanks for your informations: they are very useful !

Which king of scope are you using ?