jeffhosier
Well-known member
I have a Panasonic Lumix G5 micro 4/3 camera which I'm thinking of using for digiscoping, and hit some snags. If there's anyoone out there who's made a successful go of this, I'd appreciate some advice.
I've seen an adaptor made by SRB-Griturn which fits into the body of the camera, and replaces the camera's lens with a tube that slides over the scope eyepiece in the usual way (http://srb-photographic.co.uk/micro-four-thirds-digiscoping-kit-7442-p.asp). It seems like a very neat solution, particularly since the only lens I've got is a telephoto, and that's inappropriate for digiscoping. The idea of using the body without a camera lens is very appealing.
I've been doing some experiments with the camera body and a scope by just holding the camera body against the scope eyepiece, and come up against two problems, that seem to make this idea a non-starter.
Firstly, if I focus on the target using the scope and then apply the camera to take the shot, I have to manually refocus the scope an enormous amount to get a clear image on the camera. The scope's a Swarovski that doesn't have a fast focus and this takes an age.
Secondly, in order to use the camera without a lens, I have to set the menu item "shoot w/o lens" to "on" otherwise the shutter won't fire. Unfortunately, whenever the camera is turned off or goes to sleep, it resets this option to "off" making it unusable until it's reset to "on" manually.
Combined, these two issues mean that If I spot something in the scope, and then try to take a picture, it could take me between 30 seconds and a minute to get in a position to take a shot. Great for static targets but pretty useless for birds.
So the question is, has anybody made this approach work, and if so how? Any advice would be much appreciated.
Jeff
I've seen an adaptor made by SRB-Griturn which fits into the body of the camera, and replaces the camera's lens with a tube that slides over the scope eyepiece in the usual way (http://srb-photographic.co.uk/micro-four-thirds-digiscoping-kit-7442-p.asp). It seems like a very neat solution, particularly since the only lens I've got is a telephoto, and that's inappropriate for digiscoping. The idea of using the body without a camera lens is very appealing.
I've been doing some experiments with the camera body and a scope by just holding the camera body against the scope eyepiece, and come up against two problems, that seem to make this idea a non-starter.
Firstly, if I focus on the target using the scope and then apply the camera to take the shot, I have to manually refocus the scope an enormous amount to get a clear image on the camera. The scope's a Swarovski that doesn't have a fast focus and this takes an age.
Secondly, in order to use the camera without a lens, I have to set the menu item "shoot w/o lens" to "on" otherwise the shutter won't fire. Unfortunately, whenever the camera is turned off or goes to sleep, it resets this option to "off" making it unusable until it's reset to "on" manually.
Combined, these two issues mean that If I spot something in the scope, and then try to take a picture, it could take me between 30 seconds and a minute to get in a position to take a shot. Great for static targets but pretty useless for birds.
So the question is, has anybody made this approach work, and if so how? Any advice would be much appreciated.
Jeff