Digiscoping (1 Viewer)

Hi All

I want to start digiscoping and need some advice please.

I have a Kowa TSN 4 telescope and an Epson Photo PC 750Z digital camera with 3 X optical zoom.,so does anyone know what adaptor I need to get these 2 together.,and where the best place would be to purchase such an item.

Many thanks

Dr.Richard Banham

Hi Richard,
I'm not altogether confident of the suitability of that particular camera for digiscoping, unless maybe you can get hold of the 27x L.E.R. (long eye-relief eyepiece). Then again, you may have already experimented by holding the camera up to your scope's eyepiece and found you get a reasonably vignette-free image.
If your camera has provision for using add-on lense via an epson lens adapter, that may well give you a suitable thread just in front of where the lens reaches at it's maximum amout of travel outwards from the camera body...thus allowing a typical digiscoping adapter to be used (L.C.E, Eagleeyeuk digimount). Chances are that if Epson do produce such a device it will give a thread size too large for most adapters to screw directly onto, therefore a thread step-down ring will be needed as well.

If this route is too complicated or Epson don't produce a suitable add-on lens/filter adapter you could try one of the various devices that hold your camera up to the eyepiece via the tripod socket on the underside of your camera (srbfilm.co.uk, simplicitytool.com and eagleeyeuk.co.uk with their 'cam-mount')
I hope that helps a little.
Regards,
Andy

tchagra said:

Hi All

I want to start digiscoping and need some advice please.

I have a Kowa TSN 4 telescope and an Epson Photo PC 750Z digital camera with 3 X optical zoom.,so does anyone know what adaptor I need to get these 2 together.,and where the best place would be to purchase such an item.

Many thanks

Dr.Richard Banham

Click to expand...

Hi Andy

Many thanks for your suggestions and I will now give things some serious thought

Richard

digiscoping

tchagra said:

Hi All

I want to start digiscoping and need some advice please.

I have a Kowa TSN 4 telescope and an Epson Photo PC 750Z digital camera with 3 X optical zoom.,so does anyone know what adaptor I need to get these 2 together.,and where the best place would be to purchase such an item.

Many thanks

Dr.Richard Banham

Click to expand...

Hi Richard

The Kowa DCA digital adapter will fit the TSN4. You need to find out what size filters your camera will take and get the suitable sized adapter ring to go with the DCA. Try talking to Birdnet, or have a look at their web site, they helped me a lot - talk to their Richard who digiscopes, he'll point you in the right direction.

Angigator

Re Digiscoping

angigator said:

Hi Richard

The Kowa DCA digital adapter will fit the TSN4. You need to find out what size filters your camera will take and get the suitable sized adapter ring to go with the DCA. Try talking to Birdnet, or have a look at their web site, they helped me a lot - talk to their Richard who digiscopes, he'll point you in the right direction.

Angigator

Click to expand...

Hi Angigator

Many thanks for the advice.I will look into the birdnet site and see where I get to from there.

Cheers for now

Ricardo

tchagra said:

Hi All

I want to start digiscoping and need some advice please.

I have a Kowa TSN 4 telescope and an Epson Photo PC 750Z digital camera with 3 X optical zoom.,so does anyone know what adaptor I need to get these 2 together.,and where the best place would be to purchase such an item.

Click to expand...

I have an Epson 750z, but I have never tried digiscoping with it. The 750z was my first digital camera that I could make prints with that had me thinking that I wasn't going to use film any more. Its the camera that got me back interested in photography.

But I'm not sure its a great place to start digiscoping. You'll have to get some sort of adapter that uses the camera's tripod mount. I'm pretty sure that there are no threads for a lens or lens barrel attachment.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to do some handholding just to see if the camera might digiscope decently. But frankly, I think you'll be happier in the end if you look for a different camera for digiscoping. If for no other reason, to get images with more pixels.

Well, I got Phred the Wonder Pheasant out of the closet and perched him in a small palm tree in some pretty bad light. Excluding his tail, Phred is about 6 inches long. I put the Swarovski ATS80HD about 30 feet away and mounted the DCA with 28mm adapter to help guide the 750z for handholding. I used the 20-60x zoom eyepiece. All of the images - unmodified - can be found here:
http://www.jayandwanda.com/digiscope/750z/

About halfway through I decided that the images were too washed out and I decided to reduce the exposure by a stop. This reminded me of one of the 750z's limitations. You must navigate through a series of menus and options just to bias the exposure and then you have to do it again to get back to normal. This camera does not easily give up control.

But the results also reminded me of what I like about this camera. It just seems to work. The better images I took were quite sharp. 04240029.jpg is quite sharp. I think the unsharp images are about evenly split between being out of focus an being caused by motion blur. The very close images were taken at 60x! 04240029.jpg was taken around 30x or so.

So, my conclusion is that the 750z certainly makes decent images through a scope. Its 1.2 MP sensor is definitely small by today's standards, but this camera seems to make the most out of what it has. Consider also that a 1.2MP camera will let you reasonably consider digiscoping at 60x. Your biggest problem will be scope motion.

Re Epson

Jay Turberville said:

I have an Epson 750z, but I have never tried digiscoping with it. The 750z was my first digital camera that I could make prints with that had me thinking that I wasn't going to use film any more. Its the camera that got me back interested in photography.

But I'm not sure its a great place to start digiscoping. You'll have to get some sort of adapter that uses the camera's tripod mount. I'm pretty sure that there are no threads for a lens or lens barrel attachment.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to do some handholding just to see if the camera might digiscope decently. But frankly, I think you'll be happier in the end if you look for a different camera for digiscoping. If for no other reason, to get images with more pixels.

Click to expand...

Dear Jay

Many thanks for your advice,someone else has suggested a special adapter that will fit the telescope but I then need to find a special ring to get the 2 to fit together.

Long term I think I might well follow your suggestion to buy another digi camera
to get more pixels and 1 where the lens stays flat on the camera when switched on,finding the right adapter will be much easier then.

My Epson is quite old now and there have been so many advances in the technology since I bought it in San Francisco!!!

I am flying to OZ in June and am stopping over in Singapore for 2 nights so will see if there are any good cameras there that may well be cheaper too than over here.

Kind Regards

Richard

Re Digiscoping

angigator said:

Hi Richard

The Kowa DCA digital adapter will fit the TSN4. You need to find out what size filters your camera will take and get the suitable sized adapter ring to go with the DCA. Try talking to Birdnet, or have a look at their web site, they helped me a lot - talk to their Richard who digiscopes, he'll point you in the right direction.

Angigator

Click to expand...

Hi Angigator

Many thanks for your advice.

I will take a look at the birdnet site and see what help I can get there.

Cheers for Now

Tchagra

Leica

Does anyone have any experience digiscoping with a Leica Televid 77? I didn't buy it with digiscoping in mind but my old digtal camera is due to be replaced and if I buy a new one I might as well get one that would work with my scope.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.