The quickest, most accessible means of nature photography is “digiscoping”. The name is a portmanteau of “digital camera” and “spotting scope,” and the gist of the technique is simple: you hold your camera up to the eyepiece of your spotting scope and take a picture.
This technique is also called afocal photography. It’s really simple and, when practiced with care, can produce great results without the need for expensive cameras or telephoto lenses.
The advantages of digiscoping
Digiscoping has several practical advantages. First and foremost, it’s quick. Should a birdwatcher spot a rare bird through their spotting scope, and want to document it, they need a means of imaging it quickly before it flies off.
Other times, you might spot a bird but it will be too far away for you to get a good picture with just your camera. The magnification provided by the spotting scope brings distant birds into range.
It’s also a terrific way to conduct nature photography on a budget, making the hobby much more accessible to many more people.
This accessibility is enhanced by its simplicity. At its most basic, digiscoping is so terrifically simple that anybody can do it — just hold your camera phone up to the eyepiece of your spotting scope and snap away.
What equipment will you need?
Despite the name, digiscoping doesn’t necessarily require a spotting scope. You can also do it with binoculars (placing your camera over one of the barrels) or a monocular, but both of these options have lower magnification (usually around 10x) than spotting scopes, and it’s the magnification that will really allow your photography of birds (or any other distant wildlife) to pop.
The best spotting scopes can have magnifications greater than 60x, such as the Celestron Ultima 100, which has zoom magnification of 22x to 66x, or the Bushnell 20-60×65 Prime, which has 20x to 60x magnification. Both of these examples are reasonably affordable, too.
As a rule, look for spotting scopes with larger apertures. A spotting scope of 85mm diameter will let more light in than one with a 60mm aperture, for example. This is important when zooming in, as a smaller spotting scope will have lower light levels, meaning your photograph will appear darker.
For steady viewing, a tripod is essential, with a panhandle head for ease of motion of the scope. Spotting scopes usually come with “feet” that can easily be fixed to a quick-release head.
Then there’s a camera. Smartphone…
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