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.

Hello Tanny,

I think your Owl is priceless ...
To take a picture of a Bird is great but to be strolling down a Beautiful Lane
on the Sun we've had Today with your Loved One AND have an Owl Fly and
Land on a post in the Sun ... Then casually lift your Bin's and take picture's
of this Bird you rarely see ( For me anyway ... Never seen One! lol, ) Is
beautiful ... Congratulation's on a Great Picture ... I'd of paid to have
photographed that,
Stick to your Method Tanny ... Lovely way to take snap's of WildLife,
I liked the picture so much i slightly blurred the background and slightly
sharpened the Owl the see a slight contrast between the Two,
I'm keeping this i think for my next Sculpt ... The setting is great,
Thank's,
Tc,
John,

Lucky Owl shot,Tanny,well done.

Thank's so much for the compliments John. It was the rickaty fence that appealed to me, the Owl was just the "icing on the cake" in the picture. I think I might do a painting one day of this setting. Here are some more pictures, hope you are able to use them. Thanks again. Tanny

Hi again. Today I managed to take my best picture of the Long-tail Tits but the buildings in the background spoils the picture. I took it from inside the living room beside the fire.Thankfully the window cleaner had just been and cleaned the glass. All I have done is resize the picture and I am wondering if anyone would be interested in editing it so that I might get an idea on how to edit correctly.

Tanny,I have only done the very basic alterations.I cropped as tight as I dare around the birds,then just upped the pixeks to 500max.Any larger and there would I think have been lots of noise.
i will submit this reply and then return to have a look,it may be a mess!!!

no,Tanny,it isn't very good,but it just enlarges the birds a little.Hopefully someone else may be able to help.

Thanks Christine, a good effort. I havn't seen a picture of Long-tail Tits looking right at the camera like these two are doing. I am hoping for some miracle in turning them into a picture good enough for printing and framing. What do you think John, any advice on how to paint out the building, do you think a darker background would enhance the birds.

Hello Tanny,

First off ... What a great picture ... Have'nt took a Long Tailed Tit picture yet,
I did try with your picture but with not much success ... I will post it if you want but the picture is'nt enough to Work on,
By the way ... What Camera do you use ... I'm very curious to be honest,
Did you crop or downgrade the picture before you uploaded it as the Original
could be better to make clearer,
Hope your DigiBinning is going well, Took a Wren Yesterday ... My first
picture of One,
I've attached it,
Take care,
John,

Thanks for the comments and effort. All I do with the pictures here is to resize them to fit small enough to be entered in an email, roughly 800-600.
I use a Fujifilm Digital camera, FinePix F700 and an older Fujifilm FinePix A405 but this latter camera leaves a smudge mark on the picture so I only use this for micro pictures. To get this cleaned would cost as much as the camera itself. Thats a great picture of a wren, I just cannot get a picture of that bird because it skulks about among the plants most of the time.
Good luck, Tanny

Got to ask Tanny ... what's your recipe in the Cone's?,
They seem to like it,

I put in the cones a mixture of suet, sultanas and sunflower hearts. This is the same mixture that I put into holes in logs that I hang up for the Great-spotted Woodpeckers. My wife makes a great cake for the birds, she mixes into a pudding bowl, flour, bran, oats, sultanas, bird seed, sunflower hearts and many other items that she can find, she binds it all together with suet and puts it in the microwave for ten minutes. the birds go mad on it. Icing sugar and mazipan is another attraction to the Long-tail tits and the Blackcap. Now that the birds are starting to nest we cut out the peanuts, just incase they try feeding them to the young. To replace the nuts we now start feeding mealworms. The Tits are now starting to collect the dogs hair from a spring containor that we hung up beneath one of the bird tables. I think we can safely say that spring is here at last.:)

That sound's a good little dinner your serving them,
I make a groundfeed ...
Grated Cheese,
Sultana's,
Biscuit crumb's,
Seed,
Alpen,
Mixed together ... They eat it all so quick lol,
I hope your still taking some nice picture's Tanny, ;) ,
Thank's for the recipe ... I take it you mix the Suet in without melting it?,
You let the Microwave melt it?, ... Be nice a more detailed text of that Cake
Recipe of your Wife's, Thank's Tanny and Take Care,
John,

Hi John, its been a while since I had time to get involved .
As you say my wife mixes everything all together and puts into the microwave to melt the suet that binds all the ingrediants. The mixture varies with what we have at hand at the moment, but the basics are the Sunflower hearts, sultanas, mixed seed, bran, and flour. At this time of the year we don't put out pea nuts so they are not included in the cake until next winter. I am having trouble at the moment with a pesky Squirrel, it persistantly attacks the cake, thankfully it ignors the hanging feeders. Whenever I see it I dash out, clapping my hands and chase it up the lane. Each time I chase it the cheeky blighter becomes less and less afraid, and only keeps a fiew pases in front of me now. At this rate I fear it might retaliate and turn on me.
The Blackbird, Robin, Dunnock and the Wood Pigeons seem to be the main consumers of the cake at this time of the the year.

Digibinning Little Ringplover
 

My first lifer of the Little Ringplover.:) So glad I was able to get a couple of pictures to have as a memory. Thank goodness I had my camera and binoculars, plus a steady hand for a change to get these pictures. These were taken at the Inner Marsh Farm RSPB reserve, yesterday, 26th July.

Very good Tanny.You do a great job with bins and camera.