Coosing a Camera for Digiscoping

[@MrDavidh49]

A good video. What is the name of the sony camera that worked without vignetting?

[@colleenhamilton894]

I have a Celestron Regal M2 100ED Angled spotting scope. I purchased the Celestron T Ring adaptor and assumed when I connected this to the camera body of my Nikon D3100 camera, I could then take photos through the spotting scope. However my camera keeps saying, no lens attached and it won't take any pictures. How can I get my camera to work on the spotting scope? Does it need something else attached?

[@StephenIngraham]

Micro 4/3s SLRs sometimes can autofocus behind the eyepiece, but most people who use a DSLR use manual focus. With the ZEISS Photo Adapter the only option is manual focus.

[@c0gsinc0gs]

I really need to know what the mount you were using for your dslr was. The one that swings out of the way.

[@Naturfotografen]

Your camera seems to be recharged ;) Thank you for a good review!

[@klastorps]

What compact camera did you use?

[@StephenIngraham]

The Sony is the long discontinued N series. All current Sonys have zooms in the 1-4, 1-5, 1-7 range, and show vignetting at the wide ends.

[@lr5867]

Another approach is to get a 35-80mm macro zoom lens. The entrance pupil on the macro zoom lens is toward the front of the lens body, much like a digicam or the human eye. Most short macro zooms start at f/3.5, forcing higher ISO & more noise, so definitely look for a faster one at f/2.8. Manual lenses are fine, just focus to infinity at the widest aperture (lowest f-ratio) & focus with the spotting scope. The corners might vignette, but then there's so much more room to crop w/ a 16 or 24 megapixel photo, the corners are usually OOF due to coma (non-axis radial blurring) from the afocal eyepiece-to-camera interface. Note the obvious improvement in image quality at the 2:00 minute mark w/ the fixed eye piece. All scope makers ought to offer decent, Plössl fixed focal length e.p.'s w/ long eye relief.

[@lr5867]

Eye relief is the other part of the problem here, they're failing to mention it. Getting a better fixed-length/magnification Plössl is clearly a huge benefit here. A 1¼" 32mm Plössl for instance gives 50° afov, provides 22mm of eye relief, at 12x (which seems weak) but can be powered up using a 2x Barlow insert bringing it to 24x with the same eye relief but narrower afov & lose an f stop or two. A 40mm Plössl an extremely generous 28mm of eye relief reduces the afov to 43° & magnification is 9x, but it gains a stop which you can then sacrifice back into the 2x barlow to 18x, but keep the eye relief. In the astro community all this eyepiece swapping is SOP, but the scope makers don't want their users to stray too far off the plantation (check out that $500 "universal" digiscoping adapter by Swaro).

[@StephenIngraham]

It is a Zeiss Digital Camera Adapter and only fits the Zeiss DiaScopes. Any Zeiss dealer can get you one.

[@brown55061]

I have a 26x zoom P100 that I take astrophotos with (moon, sun, jupiter etc). I know there are tons of people who use real telescopes with their dSLR size cameras so I don't understand why a superzoom digital can't be made to work the same.

[@redbuzzardbass]

When you think about it a bridge camera doesn't need to be attached to the back end of a shooting scope. The Nikon P900 does 82* optical zoom which is more than my 100mm Celestron spotting scope, by quite a bit.

[@steveavery77]

You are right about the sweet spot....

[@semiauto3148]

Coosing?

[@arkuriyollar]

thank