Introduction to Digiscoping

With the advance of the digital revolution has come the increasingly popular hobby of digiscoping. Digiscoping refers to capturing images with a digital point & shoot camera by shooting through the eyepiece of a telescope or spotting scope, and it is a lot of fun. After the initial acquisition of necessary tools you can make a seemingly-infinite number of shots without additional costs, quickly refining technique to produce great images.

Let's take a look at what is needed to get started:

Whenever it is possible, a remote control or wired shutter release for the camera will improve your image resolution-so if such a device exists for your camera, be sure to get it.

The trick to good results in digiscoping is the proper placement and support for your digital camera adjacent to the scope's eyepiece. Some manufacturers offer eyepieces ideally suited to the needs of digiscoping, such as the Nikon DS series for the Fieldscopes spotting scopes.

These eyepieces have a flatter and wider viewing field than the typical zoom eyepieces, which tends to benefit the ease of uniting with the camera as well as the imagery captured itself. While it is possible to use a zoom eyepiece in digiscoping, the optical characteristics of fixed focal length "wide angle" eyepieces will consistently yield better images. It is advised to select an eyepiece with lower magnification, because much additional effective magnification can be achieved merely by zooming the digital camera's lens.

The digital camera can be placed near the scope's eyepiece in a large variety of ways.

Universal mounting brackets typically achieve sharper images more easily than the devices attaching the camera to the eyepiece, but are heavier and thus less suited to shooting from multiple positions such as if upon a hike.

One of the great benefits of digiscoping is sharing the experience through the camera's rear screen, several observers can simultaneously watch the view instead of just one person at a time upon the eyepiece. For this reason, it is advised to use an "45-Degree Angled Viewing" scope rather than a straight scope, because the placement of the screen will be such that many viewers can easily see the action.

Once you have the camera and eyepiece aligned, you'll need to take care to avoid vignetting-a darkening of the edges of the image. This is caused by the view from the eyepiece incompletely filling the view of the digital camera, and this is why “wide angle” eyepieces work better-they have broader eyepieces than zooms and thus more room for the digital camera to see the view. You will need to place the camera close enough to avoid vignetting, but not so close that you cannot zoom the lens forward when trying to fill the frame of the camera with a small subject.

Select a zoom setting for your camera which fills the LCD screen with your subject-the name of the game is to fill the frame!

Whatever setup you choose, it is important to use a tripod that's sturdy enough for the job, as well as proper technique. Touch the camera as little as possible, or not at all if you have a remote shutter release. By zooming the camera's lens to capture a small portion of the view, you can quickly achieve enormous effective focal lengths-which are great if you can keep the image sharp at such magnifications!

The camera's shooting mode should be in continuous if possible, and if you can select amongst metering methods the centerweighted metering typically works best. Additionally, if your camera offers a manual exposure mode it should be used-so that you can select the lens' maximum aperture to achieve the highest shutter speed possible in the given lighting conditions, and experiment with the shutter speed to achieve proper exposure.