Digiscoping with multi-lens phone (1 Viewer)

S

sniederb

Simon

• Jul 20, 2019

• #1

My setup is a Swarovski VPA with a Huawei P30. The latter has separate lenses for 1x and 3x zoom. Using the VPA, the 3x would give me an excellent view of field, but I'm struggling with the way the phone decides which lens to use:

The 3x optical lens will only be used if there is enough light. Otherwise, the 3x setting will result in a digital zoom from the standard 1x lens. If I adjust the VPA for the 3x lens, it seems parts of the VPA are covering the light sensors, thus the camera decides there's not enough light for 3x, switches to the 1x lens, and I get a black screen (as the VPA is covering the 1x lens).

I've attached "huawei-p30-lenses.jpg" to illustrate. The top most lens is the 3x, the very bottom one the 1x lens.

Does anyone have experience digiscoping with multi-lens cameras?

 

Attachments

• 
  huawei-p30-lenses.jpg

  11.2 KB · Views: 60

P

pppppvvvv

Guest

• Jul 20, 2019

• #2

I have the p10, which has two lens, it works fine for me, but I think that's due to me not zooming, or maybe the design is different. I get an error message about covering up the 2nd lens at some point in the photo taking process, but can ignore that.

 

M

MrSmith

Member

• Jul 21, 2019

• #3

You probably require and App so you can manually control which lens your camera uses, such as:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonescope.camera&hl=en_ZA
I use https://www.procamapp.com for my iPhone X

 

S

sniederb

Simon

• Jul 23, 2019

• #4

MrSmith said:

You probably require and App so you can manually control which lens your camera uses, such as:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonescope.camera&hl=en_ZA
I use https://www.procamapp.com for my iPhone X

Click to expand...

Completely agree. Looking at descriptions, I haven't yet found an Android app which allows for that. Any pointers would be very welcome!

 

S

sniederb

Simon

• Aug 11, 2019

• #5

I've found that by zooming in to the max. of what digital zoom allows, the Huawei P30 will switch over to the 3x optical zoom lens. So going to max-zoom, then reverting back to 3x gives me exactly what I was looking for, my phone using the "correct" lens.

 

S

sniederb

Simon

• Aug 17, 2019

• #6

I've put together my findings here: https://chbirds.wordpress.com/2019/07/22/digiscoping-with-a-huawei-p30/

 

J

jkingrph

Well-known member

• Nov 8, 2019

• #7

I am in a similar dilemma now. Planning on upgrading from iPhone 7 to an iPhone 11 pro that has 3 lenses, and am wondering what i need to do for adapters for my Kowa TSN 82sv

 

Steve O4B

Optics4Birding.com

• Nov 22, 2019

• #8

The Celestron NexYZ Universal Phone Adapter gives you easy 3-axis control with very little blockage. It's a bit bulky, so you'll probably want a case with a belt loop or carabiner to carry it. It fits every phone we've tried it with. It is a bit tight on the Swarovski ATX/STX eyepieces.