Digiscoping with Kowa TSN-821M. Will Canon A570IS work? (1 Viewer)

[Tamir]

Hello all,

I own a TSN-821 Kowa scope and want to get into digiscoping. I searched a little bit in the forum threads and noticed that people use the Canon A570IS as their Digiscoping Camera. I wander if anybody has an experience with this camera with a Kowa scope?

If not, Is there is a better Camera or using with this scope?

I'm usually using the TSE-14WE - 32x Wide Angle eyepiece but I also own the 20-60x Zoom eyepiece.

Best Regards,

- Tamir.

 

[GarnockFocus]

The Canon A series have always been good for Digiscoping. I am using the older A85 and its excellent, I would imagine the A570 is better looking at the spec ;-)

 

[twegier]

I am using A540, the older brother of A570, with Zeiss 65T/23x, and it works fine, at least it gives no vignetting. So it has a some chance to work fine with Kowa as well. A500 series is apparently more digiscoping friendly than A600 series, and they (A540 and A570) have several nice features, like manual controls, possibility to use an adapter, and custom timer. But they also have small sensors (1/2.5''), so in terms of picture quality they cannot really compete with some other cameras frequently used for digiscoping. If you are not crazy about picture quality, you should be happy with A570, if you are, then go for some camera with 1/1.8'' or bigger sensors, as actually I am planning to do myself.

 

[GarnockFocus]

>If you are not crazy about picture quality, you should be happy with A570, if you are,
>then go for some camera with 1/1.8'' or bigger sensors, as actually I am planning to
>do myself.

What cameras have the 1/1.8" that are available now?

 

[Tamir]

Many thanks for the replies,

Currently my main reason for digiscoping is for record shots and practicing bird identification when I'm not sure with the bird ID in the field so I'm less concerned with the picture quality. Also, the Kowa TSN-821 is not HD glass so this will reduce the picture quality as well.

My main concern with the Canon A5xx series is the way the lens works. As I understood from a different thread the Canon 4x zoom lens has one part of it working inside the other therefore moving the barrel forwards and backwards continuously instead of in a single linear movement. I wonder if this causing big vignetting problems when taking a shot.

- Tamir.

 

[twegier]

>What cameras have the 1/1.8" that are available now?
Digiscoper62, as far as I know, Canon A600 series, Nikon P5000/P5100 and some if not all Fuji F series have bigger sensors.
Tamir, the lens of A540 is extended at wide, then it retracts and extends again at tele. The position of the lens changes during this by half a centemeter or so. It may be a problem when using a closed adapter when you do not see properly the distance between the lens front and the eyepiece. On the other hand, with Zeiss at least, it turned out not to be such a big problem, becuase I noticed that too close to the eyepiece causes some vignetting at wide and moving A540 a bit further away from the eyepiece eliminates vignetting completely. This is an example that too close is not always good. Basically I couple A540 in such a way that even when fully extended the lens should not touch the eyepiece (although to be on the safe side, I try not to use the extreme focal lengths). By doing this, there is no risk of scratching and no vignetting even at wide.
If your Kowa does not have any enhanced glass elements, then Canon A570 may be just right; it will probably not be a bottleneck for the picture quality. For recording purposes should be a good choice. And programmable timer is a really nice feature that i would miss for sure if I switch to e.g. Nikon P5100, regards....

 

[Tamir]

Thanks twegier,
This morning I tried the camera with my scope in a photo shop and I'm quite pleased with the results. With only hand-holding the camera I got very little vignetting at the 1x lens position.

My question is what sort of adaptor do you use to attach the A540 to your Zeiss?

Many thanks,

- Tamir.

 

[Mike Feely]

HI Tamir

I've just started digiscoping with the same scope as you with the 20-60x zoom. My camera is a Samsung L83t.

I've found with the zoom lens, vignetting is inevitable unless you use the camera's zoom due to the small exit pupil of this eyepeice.

The camera has an internal zoom, so no matter how much (or little) i zoom on the camera, i can hold it still and it is always flush to the scope.

So far, i am pretty impressed with this set up and i'm starting to get some decent results, i'm still getting used to both digiscoping itself (i'd still never tried it until about 5 weeks ago) and the settings on my camera.

The vignetting i dont find to be a problem - i tend to use the eyepiece at about 25-30x then focus while the camera is on full optical zoom. When focussed, i zoom out the camera until i can just see the vignetting, thus ensuring a decnt image with minmal vignetting. I then crop the photo in Photoshop later to remove any remaining vignetting.

When i can work out how to reduce the file size of the resulting photos (they average about 2.5Mb straight from the camera), i will post a few.

Mike

 

[twegier]

I use FoxFoto f-adapter, the bigger one. However for Zeiss eyepieces I cannot really recommend it, beacuse it is designed in such a way that it clamps at the end of an eyepiece. And at the end of the Zeiss eyepiece, there is a movable rubber eyecup that narrows down till the end. Not a good place to clamp a camera adapter. I had to enlarge the external opening of the adapter so that it goes deeper onto the eyepiece. But if your Kowa eyepiece has a straight solid finish then f-adapter may be a good choice. Also check whether Kowa makes their own camera adapters. Alternatively, if you want mostly observe and only from time to time take a photo, there are universal swing-away adapters, like the one made by Olivon, or SRB-Griturn. The latter seems to be quite popular among users of this forum.