Kev's digiscoping: Phase 2

Assistant Editor Mike Weedon writes:

Kevin Wilmot went out again this weekend for a spot of digiscoping in his garden. After his first efforts (see below), Kev reported to me that he was having a few problems – mainly that he had to zoom in a long way (with the camera) to avoid vignetting (blackening around the edges). I thought that perhaps there was a slight geometry problem between the camera, adapter and the scope's eyepiece.

So, I recommended that he tried going for the hand-held approach, as featured in our digiscoping DVD .

Kev's Nikon camera has a Nikon tube adapter which fits to the Swarovski digiscoping adapter. He found that he could hand hold the camera with the Nikon tube attached and easily centre the camera on the scope. And, lo and behold, the vignetting was gone even at the lowest magnification!

Lower magnification means less shake, faster shutter speeds and cleaner, sharper photographs. So, Kev went for it...

And he was rather pleased with his results, namely this Woodpigeon and Blue Tit (click the pics for bigger versions)...


Not bad, eh?

Watch this space for when I finally persuade him to let go of his 'fully-Automatic' parachute and learn to use the other settings on his camera...

Meantime, if you want to learn to digiscope birds using minimum fuss and no adapters (ie. the hand-held way)), check this link
for our exclusive Digiscoping Made Easy DVD.