Digiscoping
Help,
Advice & Lessons for All!

I am very new to digiscoping and have a Nikon D5000 camera and have just purchased a Celestron Ultima 100 Spotting scope.

I also got a T adaptor that I can fit the body of the cameras onto the eye piece of the scope. Picture results are poor,. what do I do?

Is the T adaptor the best way to connect together or is there another way to get better results?

Any advise / tips would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Kevin,

Don't panic, its perfectly normal to get a load of rubbish when you are learning. Chances are you wont get anything decent for a while!

Learning how to control exposure does take a bit of practice and patience. You have perfectly good equipment, and I think that you are connected in the best way. Using a lens to connect to the eyepiece does work, but the extra glass makes focussing difficult and the lenses dont really like the extra weight on them so they tend to break.

Using a Nikon without a lens means that you have to use manual mode, so you can only control exposure using ISO and shutter speed.

Make sure that you have the scope on the lowest zoom, make sure that the sun is behind you whenever possible and try to pick a sunny, wind free day to practice. Your back garden is a good place to start. Pick a solid subject that wont move such as a fence post or chimney stack and practise taking images adjusting your shutter and ISO.

If its sunny keep your ISO from 100-400 and if its dull start at 400 and go up to whatever you feel like. By taking a series of images of the same thing you will start to teach yourself how to control exposure, whilst a still subject will make focussing more easy.

But its getting past the early failures is what will make you as a digiscoper. Taking pictures in auto doesnt teach the user anything. Actual photography, especially digiscoping will teach you the true art of taking pictures, so don't give up!

Check out my good friend and digiscoper Barry Woodhouse. He digiscopes with a Nikon/Celestron combo and has fully mastered it, so hopefully it'll give you confidence that it can be done!

Thanks for your post, and good luck,

Danny