Biniscoping
 

I am a pensioner on the basic pension so cannot afford a super-duper Telescope, however I do have a pair of old 10/50 binoculars that I have used for years. Last year I had the Great-spotted Woodpecker visiting the garden and longed to get some pictures of it. Standing in the house looking through the binoculars at the bird and with my digital camera in hand, I thought I would try to take a picture through the binoculars, the pictures were blurred but the results excited me and from then my wife and I have become mad Biniscopers. Biniscoping has added a new dimention to our birdwatching. The results we get are not world class and out of all we take, only about a third are considered by myself to be reasonable. The arthritis in the shoulders causes a shake. The wearing of glasses makes adjusting the focus of the binoculars rather dificult, and by the time I have adjusted them the bird has flown away, but in the end we get some results and I would like to say that we are becoming quite skilfull as Biniscopers. I was wondering if there were any other members doing biniscoping and do they have any tips on improving our techneque.

I don't do it myself butI have a friend who occasionally shoots through binos.

Hello Tanny,

That was my first way of "Digiscoping" ... I've been doing Scoping, Photography, BinoScoping for nearly 2 Month's now so very new to all this
Myself, But i have been practicing a lot ... In that 2 Month's i've bought a Scope and another Camera,
So ... I think i may be able to help you on this Binoscoping thing,
Firstly ... If you can spare £30 then you can have Shake free picture's by getting this Adapter, It Work's very well,
I've attached some Picture's for you to see,
Apologie's if you already knew
this Technique but it may help other's,
If you need any more Info please ask or Pm me,
Happy Binoscoping!!!,
Tc,
John,

Shouldn't it be 'digibinning' rather than binoscoping (unless one's using bins and 'scope of course!)

Lol i guess it should,
Tc,
John,

Thanks for that info John. I never knew there was anything like that equipment that you have illustrated. Now where do I get one of those watchermacallit attachments, not on Ebay I hope because I have no Bankcard.;)
Yor'e right Adey, Digibinning is correct, but what the heck, I knew what I meant, and had never heard of any one else doing it. By the way I've read and admired all your work on this and the sister forum and wonder if you, being an expert, have any experiance with this method, and do you know of any literature on it, there must be some otherwise why the manufactured equipment that John has just illustrated.:)

Well, I did have a go at it but thought that I might need three hands to make it a success! With a telescope mounted on a tripod you can concentrate on using the camera with both hands, but needing to hold the binoculars as well completely defeated me.

I don't know whether such a device exists but, somewhere along the line there may be a way of attaching a very small digicam to one eyepiece so that you can focus using the other - ie fit the camera to the right eyepiece then use the left-hand eyepiece at your right eye, if you see what I mean. It would probably have to be a home-made thing unless you could get a step-down ring small enough for the thread of the bin's eyecups on one end and a camera's filter-thread at the other.

Incidentally, on the theme of 'there's nothing new under the sun,' Zeiss used to make a version of their 8x30 (I think) monocular with a fitting for their Contarex or Contaflex SLR cameras back in the 1960s (and probably the 1950s as well). I've got a copy of the 'Leica Manual' dating from 1947 and it features an article on taking a photo of the moon with a Leica rangefinder camera held against a (Zeiss!) telescope - the accompanying photo was taken in 1935 so if anyone of today's upstarts tries to claim to be a pioneer of the method just pat them gently on the head and tell them to 'run along home, sonny!'

You can use a Monocular too as i shown in this Thread ...Halfway down the Page,
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread....8&page=2&pp=25
But still a little fiddly,

Yes with the Binocular setup you can adjust the eyepiece on the Right
side of the Bin's to do fine focus etc,
As for Ebay ... I never bought it from there ... I bought it from this Telescope Site ...
http://www.dhinds.co.uk/pages/fullProd.php?id=400

Give them a call and maybe you can send them Postal Order's etc,
I use the Adapter for my ED 80 ES Scope and Camera,
Good luck on the "DigiBinning" ;) ,
Tc,
John,

Tanny,your digibinning images are very good.So I do hope you are able to give this gadget a try.Sounds very interesting.You will need one for the Butterfly explosion!!!

Thanks Adey, John, I appreciate all the advice and information and will look up those web sites. I think I might be satisfied with what I am doing actualy because It's very convenient with just having the binoculars around my neck and camera in hand. At my age and creaky joints anything fiddly could be inconvenient. I take pictures as a new extention to my hobby of bird watching and they don't have to be perfect, take today as an example. My wife and I were strolling along a lane and suddenly a Short-eared Owl flew past, up came the binoculars and camera and we clicked away merrily, especialy when the bird perched on a post for a moment. An elderly couple caught up with us and enquired what we were doing. "Were Digibinning that owl on that post" They couldn't see the owl without binoculars so I lent them mine. I think there might be some more enthusiastic digibinners on the way.