Laurie93
Well-known member
I've recently replaced my aged 10 year old coolpix with the Nikon P330 (which is a HUGE improvement!), so I've had to make a new adapter. My last one was made out of a savlon spray bottle top, however I had to carry it separately from the eyepiece and the camera, and there was always a danger of loosing it or it breaking (which it did not long ago!).
After a couple of weeks of inspecting various bottles and tubing, I realized that the inner diameter of a milk bottle top was just the right size for the P330. However the outer diameter was a little too big to fit inside the eye cup of the eyepiece, so I cut the notching on the outside of the bottle top off and sanded away just under a millimetre of the eye cup until it fitted snugly.
To get the perfect distance of the lens to the eyepiece, I cut out and sanded down another thin bit of plastic into a ring and blue tacked it down.
The advantage of this adapter is that I will keep it inside the eyepiece even when just using the scope for birding, so its always in place if I want to take a photo, and its impossible for it to loose or break.
The only slight disadvantage is that you have to hand hold it, so in low light the images might become blurred, however I haven't had this problem yet and I don't really see it as one - modern cameras these days are able to keep their shutter speeds so high even in really dim conditions! If it is too dark for hand held though, I can flip the camera portrait and it will securely stay in place without me touching it. Then the self timer can be used.
It's certainly the best adapter I've made to date. Why spend so much money on massive complicated universal camera adapters! All I have to do is slip my camera out of my pocket and put it into the eyepiece and its perfectly aligned!
I hope this might inspire some to give making something similar ago!
After a couple of weeks of inspecting various bottles and tubing, I realized that the inner diameter of a milk bottle top was just the right size for the P330. However the outer diameter was a little too big to fit inside the eye cup of the eyepiece, so I cut the notching on the outside of the bottle top off and sanded away just under a millimetre of the eye cup until it fitted snugly.
To get the perfect distance of the lens to the eyepiece, I cut out and sanded down another thin bit of plastic into a ring and blue tacked it down.
The advantage of this adapter is that I will keep it inside the eyepiece even when just using the scope for birding, so its always in place if I want to take a photo, and its impossible for it to loose or break.
The only slight disadvantage is that you have to hand hold it, so in low light the images might become blurred, however I haven't had this problem yet and I don't really see it as one - modern cameras these days are able to keep their shutter speeds so high even in really dim conditions! If it is too dark for hand held though, I can flip the camera portrait and it will securely stay in place without me touching it. Then the self timer can be used.
It's certainly the best adapter I've made to date. Why spend so much money on massive complicated universal camera adapters! All I have to do is slip my camera out of my pocket and put it into the eyepiece and its perfectly aligned!
I hope this might inspire some to give making something similar ago!
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