Cost-effective digiscoping adapters. (1 Viewer)

Frustrated by the absurdly high cost of native digiscoping adapters, this thread tries to gather some of the best cost-effective alternatives for digiscoping with phones/cameras with binoculars and spotting scopes. Please add your own suggestions to the thread for various systems. It will be much appreciated by many!

For digiscoping with a phone, native/third party adapters can be very specific for a single phone, and also quite expensive (>$50 to $100 per piece per phone or scope's eyepiece).

So finding a *single* product that is both cost effective and flexible enough to work across systems was of paramount interest. Searching around Amazon and on a suggestion from Alexis Powell, we looked at the Gosky small & Gosky big type adapters, which are built for two different yet wide ranges of diameter eyepieces. We purchased the Big Type at $35, and happily use this *single* product on all our phones (Galaxy S7, iPhone 6, and I am sure anything else would work as well), mounting them on all our binoculars and a scope.

Cool, thanks for the tip.

I have the Opticron USM-2 phone adapter. It will work with most phones (except the truly large) and most eyepieces / binoculars. It can be a little hassle to get the phone lined up, but once you do it works great.

The Swarovski rigid phone adapter is much more precise and much more expensive. No problems getting it aligned.

Marc

Homemade adapters

I made two adapters from steel flat stock 1/4" x1 1/4". Drilled some clearance holes and threaded holes. By measuring carefully before drilling, the adjustment and alignment nightmares go away. The jack screw gives you vertical adjustment,swivel camera and scope for horizontal adjustment. No idea why images are upside down.

cool

Mcgiiver said:

I made two adapters from steel flat stock 1/4" x1 1/4". Drilled some clearance holes and threaded holes. By measuring carefully before drilling, the adjustment and alignment nightmares go away. The jack screw gives you vertical adjustment,swivel camera and scope for horizontal adjustment. No idea why images are upside down.

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I like the creativity....back in the old days of digiscoping I had a setup made from PVC pipe etc....as long a sit works! And it was fun being inventive.... jim

marcsantacurz said:

I have the Opticron USM-2 phone adapter. It will work with most phones (except the truly large) and most eyepieces / binoculars. It can be a little hassle to get the phone lined up, but once you do it works great.

The Swarovski rigid phone adapter is much more precise and much more expensive. No problems getting it aligned.

Marc

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Hi, thanks for this info. Do you know whether the Opticron USM-2 will work with three lens iPhones? I have the iPhone12 mini.

lmans66 said:

cool



I like the creativity....back in the old days of digiscoping I had a setup made from PVC pipe etc....as long a sit works! And it was fun being inventive.... jim

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Apologies for digging up a bit of an old thread but I was wondering if you have any details on the PVC adapter you made? I'd love to get in to digiscoping but I'm on a very tight budget so anything I can make myself from stuff I have in the garage is a definite plus!!

DapperBarbarian said:

Apologies for digging up a bit of an old thread but I was wondering if you have any details on the PVC adapter you made? I'd love to get in to digiscoping but I'm on a very tight budget so anything I can make myself from stuff I have in the garage is a definite plus!!

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I recently purchased a Slokey adapter from an online retailer for £18 & it's quite nicely built. It doesn't fit my Kowa 883 eyepiece but I think would fit most others.

I have a coupla cheapies that fit my range of telescopes and several mobile phones and have been quite happy with them as I do not do a lot of digiscoping. I have just 'invested' in Swarovski purchasing both the 95mm and 65mm objective lenses and associated ATX viewing module. The eyepiece on the ATX is huge and neither of my adapters fit so it is back to the drawing board as I will certainly not pay the price off Swarovski - they have had enough of my money with the additional purchase of 12x42 NL's and having to cough up for a Neoprene cover which btw does not fit over the forehead rest that I also bought - these 2 items set me back nearly 200 quid extra on top of £2.5k+ for the 'bins! I am reasonably adapt at bespoke stuff and have a small man cave in which to whittle, drill and glue things etc so when I come up with something that does the job.....for 2/10's of eff all (labour not included and it never is) I will post a pic and details on here.

Good birding -

Laurie -