Tell me how does a digiscope helps? (1 Viewer)

Hi all,

I have a noob question about this piece of equipment. I know the magnification allows the owner to view birds at much further distance than eyes can see. I have a few hesitation on using it, need some clarity/advice/comments pls:

1. Setting up is so slow
Similar to the digital camera body with the big guns, using a digiscope almost always need a tripod setup which slow down the speed of spotting a bird and seeing them.

Also, I always see birders using a scope for bird race, isn’t that too slow? By the time they setup and try to find the birds they probably move away? Or they need the extra reach to see what their eyes and bino can’t reach?

2. It’s so heavy
Do scope owners bring all 3 together (i.e. bino, camera and scope)? With all the tripod and stuffs, isn’t that too heavy to walk around with them? If u carry a Long lens with camera, do you carry 2 tripods? How do you usually use it?

3. Complementing the bino
I was reading somewhere people say its a good addition to the bino. Not sure how that helps based on #2 & 3.

I wanted to see more details in the smaller birds as well as the soaring raptors, but I’m not sure will a scope helps or a more powerful bino to complement my 8.5x as scouting bino better.

Kindly enlightened.

1. Yes it is slow to set-up. See my signature links to see my digiscoping rig (2013 and 2014 links). I only used this in areas where I was shooting specific species and I knew where they'd generally be. I'd set-up, sit, and wait.

2. Yes, very heavy. I even purposefully carried a heavy tripod and sandbag for stability. I'd never walk with my setup, I either towed it behind my recumbent trike, or used a hiking trailer to bring it along on a walk. Both saved my back.

3. I never had good binos. I aimed with the scope itself or with the little "aiming scope" on the side (with has a much wider field of view).

As to why, it was an inexpensive (because my scope was inexpensive) way to increase the range to extreme levels on an inexpensive camera. There was something fun and challenging to, under the correct conditions, take photos of a raptor at 200m away eating it's latest catch.

I've since moved on to a bridge camera, but it doesn't get quite as close to the subject and I miss that sometimes. On the other hand, I can still shoot maybe 75% of what I used to and move-around now.