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Optolyth TBG80 - CP 4500 (1 Viewer)

Frosty

Member
Thanks for peoples recent advice and help. My pictures have improved this weekend - enough to purchase an eagle-eye adapter. Up till now all my shots have been hand held!! I have attached a pic from this weekend - any advice would be welcome but I hope to see some improvement with an adapter.


Thanks

Gary
 

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Your tempting me to try this hobby and I know I've not really got the time - I can imagine it's very absorbing. But I think I shall put my camera to my scope in the garden today and see what happens. I doubt I'll end up with a shot as good as yours - very well done. I bet you're proud. Cheeky question, but just so I don't feel such a failure when I try, how many shots did you take that weren't quite as good?

Just for fun, I've applied a touch of software sharpening to the image as there's been a bit of discussion on this recently and a lot of digiscopers seem to be trying it. It does make a little difference - what do you think? You might like a softer look as it does suits this bird. If you're interested I used Photoshop and a free trial plugin download aptly called "Focus Magic".
 

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Steve, you won't believe how time-consuming it can be!

Gary, nearly all of my shots have been hand-held - my camera does suffer from vignetting when digiscoping and using the adapter just increases this by taking the lens farther from the scope eye-piece.
 
I'm about to go out into the garden to give it a go. I can well believe you about the time - and that's why I haven't touched it before. I think my camera's a poor design for digiscoping, though - I shall soon find out (it's a Fuji S602).
 
If you get a circular image just zoom up as far a you can go optically and then you'll have to crop out any vignetting on the computer.

The higher magnification you have to go the more you'll get camera shake so it's just practice from then on.

My lens just happens to fit comfortably within the eyepiece so it's not too hard to hold it reasonably steady - everything else is just down to practice.
 
The Fuji's lens is very large - I think that's going to be a problem but... I'll let you know! At least the Photoshop side won't be a problem for me!
 
How did you get on then?

In answer to your response - not long. I bought the gear about two weeks ago and that was the first day with decent weather. I would guess that about 1 in 10 shots are sharp, in focus and don't suffer from camera shake. I have since bought an adapter (eagle eye) but the few shots i have tried have suffered with more camera shake than hand-held. I'm wondering if hand held the 'system' is damped to some degree and with the adapter the system is very rigid. Only a guess, any other opinions?

The photoshop plug in looks good but in this case appears to me to be a bit too sharp - I guess its all a bit subjective in any case!

Good luck and post a pic if you managed to get anything!

Gary
 
Tomorrow I shall post some better results, I hope as I only found time this afternoon and the light was poor (~1/8 sec. exposure).

The Nikon scope was, to my surprise, much easier to use than my son's Swaro 65 (but... I had no adapter. I placed the camera on one tripod and the Nikon / Swaro 65 on another. With an adapter both scopes would surely be as easy and both allow full FOVs with no vignetting). I used an older 2mp Nikon digital camera that I borrowed from a neighbour. My Fuji S602 and another neighbour's Olympus were u/s owing to the massive size of their front lens' elements causing massive vignetting with both scopes.

I attach four shots but tomorrow I hope to do better. Ruler is Nikon at, I think ~40x and at 75x. The doves are ~200 metres away and well cropped even with Nikon at 75x! (no other birds anywhere to be seen, the little blighters!).
 

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