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Skywatcher 80ED + DSLR what do I need ? (1 Viewer)

punta said:
Thanks Paul. I take it I do not need any of the accessories then?
Click to expand...

If you with accessories mean diagonal and eyepiece - no, these are not needed to mount a dslr onto scope and shoot. (however it's good to give the scope a dual purpose, by being able to make it a spotting scope as well, but that's another story)
 
I only want the scope for attaching the camera, so the reduced accessories one as advertised will be fine - looks like a nice early Christmas present to myself coming up ;)
 
Do you have the other parts that you will need such as the camera to scope adapter and the extension tube which is required to achieve correct focus? All need to be in 2" dia fitting and the extension tube ideally 50mm long.

Paul.
 
Paul Corfield said:
Do you have the other parts that you will need such as the camera to scope adapter and the extension tube which is required to achieve correct focus? All need to be in 2" dia fitting and the extension tube ideally 50mm long.

Paul.
Click to expand...

No I have not got any of the other stuff for connecting camera to scope. Will get a max dslr adapter and the 50mm extension hopefully from warehouse express at the same time as the scope - thats if they do the connectors.

Regards
 
I think 45mm is a bit short. It will work but you will only be able to focus from infinity down to around maybe 15m. I prefer something like 60mm so I can focus down to around 9m. I use a 50mm tube and just pull it out the extra 10mm. I'll look around some other sites.

Paul.
 
Here's a few links.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Link 4

Link 5

Personally I prefer one without an undercut on the barrel but some people prefer it as it is safer. I prefer the option to be able to slide the extension in and out of the scope more than the undercut would allow.

Your other option is to buy no extension tube at all and just use macro tubes between the Max dslr and the camera.

Paul.
 
Right guys I now have every thing accept the scope, but I am starting to get cold feet on pulling the trigger for a new skywatcher.

Reason being I was told by a guy who was had one of these scopes to forget it. He was a photographer for the BBC in the early 90's and used one of the 80ED scopes with camera attached. He said manual focus isn't great for birds and the f7.5 was poor for the light, he recommended I save up and just buy a canon 400 5.6 L instead for the AF.

So all you new guys who have just started to use this scope, how do you get on with manually focusing for bird photos ??

Cheers Punta
 
I disagree with all of what he said. The scope is no harder to manually focus than any other manually focusing lens. I've always been able to focus right from the start without any trouble but I came from a background of making my own manually focusing scopes for digiscoping too. At f7.5 the scope can be used in any light.

Obviously a lens is nice, not sure about 400mm though unless you sit in a hide and let the birds come close to you. The scope is manual focus and that's really all you need to consider. Image quality is pretty much the same and once you start using teleconverters then the scope is usually better.

Once you stick a teleconverter on a lens like the 400mm then you would likely be limited to manually focusing that too.

There's always going to be pluses and minuses. With the scope the pluses are the price and the image quality. The minus is manual focus only as far as if you can't manually focus. If you can manually focus then there aren't really any minuses. People might say the weight but at 600mm it is lighter than a comprable 600mm camera lens.

Paul.
 
Thanks Paul for the comments - you seem to be a bit good at this astro photo stuff also when i have tried manually focusing in the past i was total crap.

How does everyone else find using this scope - just do not want to spend £350 if its not going to suit me :(
 
punta said:
Right guys I now have every thing accept the scope, but I am starting to get cold feet on pulling the trigger for a new skywatcher.

Reason being I was told by a guy who was had one of these scopes to forget it. He was a photographer for the BBC in the early 90's and used one of the 80ED scopes with camera attached. He said manual focus isn't great for birds and the f7.5 was poor for the light, he recommended I save up and just buy a canon 400 5.6 L instead for the AF.

So all you new guys who have just started to use this scope, how do you get on with manually focusing for bird photos ??

Cheers Punta
Click to expand...

Less than a month after getting my Tamron 200-500 AF, I dive in to the C80ED. Never looked back since. Wife followed me to go birding and caught the "bird flu". Now she uses the 200-500 but always complain about OOF simply because birds like to hide behind branches or twigs and throw the focusing out. Now she use the 200-500 in MF. Takes a little more time to get that first shot but always the safer one instead of just hunting and OOF.

One dislike though is the bulky scope when it comes to packing and travelling when compared to conventional lens. I suggest you try your longest AF lens in MF. Once you get the hang of it, you'll love it. If for whatever reason, you cannot manage MF, then you'll to go the AF way. However, a good AF does comes in handy with BIF.

The 400 5.6 are good for some people. I just recommended it to two friends. One is a lady and the other a rather frail 65 years old. Both want to shoot handheld only and do quite a bit of trekking. To both of them, bird ID comes first then only talk about pic quality.

Very often I ended cheering at the shots I got compare to my friend's 400 5.6 (non IS) which cost double my scope. We do not go birding in hides but rather casual walks in the forest park. I've gone up to 1500mm X 1.5 (APSC Sensor) with favorable condition (using DIY telenegative).

Attached are not best of photos but this was taken from more than 200 meters away across a lake with slight back lighting using my 600mm + 2X TN (+ 1.5X crop factor) + 60% crop in CS5. o:D
 

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punta said:
Right guys I now have every thing accept the scope, but I am starting to get cold feet on pulling the trigger for a new skywatcher.

Reason being I was told by a guy who was had one of these scopes to forget it. He was a photographer for the BBC in the early 90's and used one of the 80ED scopes with camera attached. He said manual focus isn't great for birds and the f7.5 was poor for the light, he recommended I save up and just buy a canon 400 5.6 L instead for the AF.

So all you new guys who have just started to use this scope, how do you get on with manually focusing for bird photos ??

Cheers Punta
Click to expand...

Hello Punta

I own the 400 f/5.6 and it is a great lens, but a bit short for birding. I have recently acquired a 600mm "scope" and I am very happy with it.

I agree with Paul's statements above.

Even with only a 1.4X TC the 400 is very difficult to manually focus (you lose AF with native f/5.6 plus TC on consumer/prosumer Canon cameras), as the focus ring was not really designed to accommodate MF - the travel on the ring is very short between OoF and In Focus. I now use it mainly for BIF without TC.

The scope has somewhat of a learning curve to master the manual focus aspect. If you still have 20/20 vision it may be a doddle. All it takes is a lot of practice - even with my bad eyes (myopia and astigmatism) I now shoot without glasses or contact lenses and run at about a 60-70% keeper rate on a good day provided I keep the range closer than about 30m. On a bad day I may only get about 40% keepers. I have tried the EMF type focus confirm chip, but it is really not to my liking.

Here are some photos to compare (all Canon RAW, unprocessed, Faithful, DPP default denoise. saved as 8bit Tif and converted to JPG/resized with PDN):

1. Scope at 840mm (1.4XTC) f/9.4 - uncropped.

2. 100% crop

3. 400 f/5.6 uncropped

4. 100% crop
 

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Here are the 400mm shots

Regards

Jaco
 

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Thanks for the comments - great scope photos by the way. Will have a good go at MF over the festive period, as I do have a 100-300 lens for my camera, so will see how I get on.

Cheers Punta
 
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