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the unofficial site for birders and digiscopers using Zeiss equipment.

Digiscoping with the Zeiss Diascopes and the Digital Camera Adaptor

Using the DCA in the Field.

Once again: The magic of digiscoping is that you can bring back sharp, correctly exposed, frame filling images of birds and wildlife, with a minimal extra investment beyond the scope you are already going to carry for observation, with minimal extra weight and equipment, and from such relatively great distances that you barely intrude on the subject’s life. 35mm equivalent focal lengths for a digiscoping rig with a 1-3x camera zoom and a 30x eyepiece are roughly 750 to 3000mm. With a 40x eyepiece and the same camera you have a range of 1000 to 4000mm. With the Vario eyepiece you have a practical range of 750 to 6000mm, or 15x to 120x on the Diascope 85FL. (With the camera zoom set roughly to middle of its zoom range the camera captures an image at the power of the eyepiece.)

Basic Digiscoping Techniques:

This is a typical five moments of digiscoping birds in the field with the Zeiss Digital Camera Adaptor.

You are walking along with your scope over your shoulder. The DCA is attached and the camera is mounted and ready to go. You carry the DCA with the camera behind the eyepiece, since it is less likely to swing around in that position. You see a bird. You spread the tripod legs and set the scope down. You study the bird with your binoculars. If it appears scopeable, you swing the camera out of the way, and find and focus on the bird through the scope. Still cooperating? Is this a bird or an image you want to capture? Then you take your eye away from the eyepiece and, holding the scope steady so that it remains roughly on the bird, you swing the camera in behind the eyepiece. You turn the camera on. You carry an extra battery set, but you make every effort to preserve battery power for that unexpectedly great bird that appears at day’s end. It cycles up and the zoom extends. If you have your camera out away from the Quick Stop, you loosen the distance slider knob, slide the camera in against the stop, and tighten the slider screw again. Only a second has passed. If you were careful, the bird is now somewhere on the LCD. If not, then you have to realign the scope on the bird, using the LCD for viewing. You move the scope carefully: the field of the LCD is smaller than the scope field. The camera zoom, since the camera has been off, is automatically at its widest angle setting (lowest power: smallest image of the bird). When you have the bird in the LCD you press the shutter release half way down to engage the auto focus. You are using the Spot Focus or Center Focus setting on the camera and you put the focus point right over the bird. The camera will seek focus and hopefully find it. The focus confirmation signal comes on. (You have the focus confirmation beep and the shutter noise turned off: running silent so as to disturb the birds as little as possible.) (Sometimes it helps to set the camera in macro mode…some cameras find focus through the scope more rapidly in that mode.)  You take a few shots quickly, since you never know how long the bird is going to sit there for you. Once the “for the record” shots are out of the way, you adjust the camera zoom to fill the frame with as much of the bird as you can (unless, of course, you are already too close to fit the whole bird in.) You compose an attractive shot on the LCD, with the bird, or some portion of the bird, positioned as you want it in the frame. You take a few more quick shots, prefocusing, and then squeezing off the shot gently. Unless the bird is heavily back-lighted, you are not worrying about exposure. The camera is on Program, quite likely on center weighted exposure if you have that setting, and you know that except in extreme situations, the exposure routines built into the camera are amazingly accurate. Then, after those initial shots, you remember to check your shutter speeds, so on the next shot, you take note of the shutter speed display. You know that shutter speeds under about 1/40^th of a second are unlikely to produce acceptable sharpness. Either scope and camera motion, or motion of the bird itself (even if the bird is not moving, the branch or reed it is on will likely be) will degrade the image. You may have had the camera ISO on auto (especially if it is or was a bright, sunny day). If so, you would find the ISO setting in its menu and adjust it to 400 or above. That might reduce the shutter speed. (In general the Auto ISO setting will choose the lowest possible ISO for the conditions. The little computer in the camera does take shutter speed an aperture, that is overall light levels, into account in its routines, and, with some cameras, you will not be able to outguess it no matter what you do. You have to balance image quality…better at lower ISO settings…against increased shutter speed and sharper images.) Now you wait, watching the bird on the LCD, or with binoculars, with the shutter release pressed half way down and the lens prefocused, for the bird to do something interesting, or to turn a fraction to the left to improve the composition, or to show you its field marks…you wait for the bird to do something that will turn an the ordinary bird shot into an image that reveals the character of the bird, or one that is simply ascetically pleasing. You may play with zoom between shots, giving the bird more or less space in the frame, including more or less of the habitat, shifting the bird off-center for a more interesting composition. Eventually the bird will move on, or you will have taken enough images so that you feel confident that there is something satisfying on your memory card, and you will move on. You turn the camera off, and shoulder the tripod and scope.

Of course it isn’t always like that. Sometimes you only get those “for the record” shots. Often you don’t even get those. You will be amazed at the number of TBWH shots you bring back (The Bird Was Here). The number of TBWH shots is exceeded only by the number of BBGA shots (Bird Butt Going Away). Sometimes the bird is just too far away to fill a satisfying portion of the frame, even at full zoom on the camera (and full zoom on the scope if you are using the Vario eyepiece). You may take a few shots but you know they won’t satisfy. In general, a bird must be within about 75 feet to capture the kind of detail that will make a satisfying image. The bigger the bird, of course, the further it can be away, though shooting through much more air than that is going to degrade the image anyway. 150 feet is about the absolute limit, unless you have amazingly crystalline air. It is also true that motion effects and motion blur become increasingly obvious the further away the bird is, and the higher the power of the camera/scope combination. In our experience you will rarely get satisfying images with either the camera or the scope zoom set to highest power.

For those back-lighted situations we mentioned above, the ideal camera has an easily accessible exposure compensation or back-light button. Most cameras will, at least, be able to shift the exposure up to 2 stops in either direction, through a menu option. Often it is enough to put the camera on spot exposure, if your camera has such a setting, and to place the exposure point directly on the bird. Unfortunately, most consumer level cameras do not lock exposure with prefocus, so you can’t recompose the shot.

In those amazing situations where you do get a cooperative bird that fills the frame at a moderate zoom setting on the camera and scope, you will want to try shifting the focus point to the bird’s eye, even if that means moving the scope, locking focus, and then recomposing the image. You will be amazed at how shallow your depth of field is at 2000-3000 mm. In a shot with the bird horizontal in the frame, if the point of focus was on the wing feathers they will be sharp, but the eye, which is only millimeters further away, will not be. It may be acceptably sharp in anything less than a poster sized blow-up, but we are such “eye-orientated” creatures, that if the eye is not acceptably sharp, we will not be satisfied with the image, no matter what else is sharp.

Of course everything we have said here applies equally well to digiscoping larger wildlife. Distances can be somewhat greater, due the size of the animals, but the air between you and the subject, and the effects of motion induced blur, are still major limitations on how far away you can be.

Let us extract the salient points from that description:

1. carry the camera, set up and ready to go, behind the eyepiece, and turned off (to preserve batteries)
2. carry extra batteries
3. your best shots will when the subject is no further than 75 feet away, and 150 feet is about the outside limit. (distances somewhat greater when capturing images of larger wildlife)
4. use auto-focus: let the camera do the focusing: set on center or spot if available, and generally, with most cameras, on macro.
5. use Program and auto-exposure, except in heavily back-lighted situations, where you will want to use some sort of exposure compensation or spot metering.
6. use “Auto” ISO, unless the light levels are really low, or you think you can get higher shutter speeds by setting the ISO higher. Balance image quality (low ISO) against shutter speed and the elimination of motion induced blur. (high ISO)
7. study the subject through binocuars first, it may be the only look you get.
8. find the subject and focus on it visually, with the camera out of the way
9. swing the camera in when ready to capture an image, holding the scope steady to keep the subject in the field of view.
10. develop the skill of swinging the camera in, turning the camera on, and, if necessary, setting the distance against the Quick Stop, all in one fluid motion.
11. hold the shutter release half way down to prefocus, get focus confirmation, and then squeeze off the shot.
12. take a few “for the record” shots at the widest angle, lowest power position of the camera zoom. If the bird flies, or the bear bolts, at least you will have something on the memory card, and one or more of those images may “work” once cropped. If it is a record bird (or elk)…well, you have the record.
13. zoom as necessary, either with the camera zoom or the Vario eyepiece if you are using it, to create a pleasing composition that displays the subject to good advantage.
14. you will rarely get satisfying images at the highest powers of either the camera of scope zoom
15. take a few shots at that setting.
16. check shutter speeds and adjust ISO settings if necessary
17. if the subject is cooperative, compose and wait for the “telling moment”…for the really special image. Experiment with different zoom settings.
18. turn off the camera when you are done, or when the subject moves on.

Our description and salient points assume two things:

1)      that you are the kind of image taker who is after particular compositions and poses and you like to capture those “in the moment”, “in the field,” rather than select them from a large number of random exposures of the bird at some later date.

2)      that you have some kind of instantaneous remote shutter release…wired, infrared, or mechanical…attached to the camera.

That might not be your style. If you are, or ever have been addicted to the motor drive on a conventional or digital SLR, then you are likely to set your digiscoping camera in “burst” mode (sometimes it is called “continuous”).  Burst mode takes as many exposures as the memory buffer of the camera will hold, as close together as the camera will cycle. You might get 3 to 10 exposures in a second. If you work this way, you then take the images home and select the best of those exposures, looking for the same quality of image that the “one shot at a time” digiscoper looked for in the field. This increases your chances of getting technically correct images: well exposed and sharp. It makes getting the telling moment more dependent on your skills at predicting the subject’s behavior than it is on quick reflexes. You have to begin your burst before the subject strikes the pose you are after, or just as it begins…ideally just before it begins…the desired behavior.

Either method, once you develop the necessary skills, can produce stunning results.

And, we know a few digiscopers who still always use the self-timer, set to 1 second if possible, sometimes 2 seconds, and take their chances on what the subject will be doing by then. That works too, but you have to take proportionately more images to get a good one, and you often miss out on a particular bird and opportunity simply because the subject does not cooperate.

Our best advise is simple:

1. don’t make it harder than it has to be. Let the camera do as much of the technical work…exposure, white balance, focus…as it is willing and able to do, especially at the beginning.
2. concentrate on the enjoying the birds and wildlife and take the images as an added bonus, an enrichment of your birding experience
3. practice: carry your digiscoping rig on every field-trip and excursion. Go out, once in a while, just to digiscope. Take a lot of pictures.
4. practice on easy birds or other wildlife (see number one): herons, egrets (though they can be an exposure challenge), gulls. Small, active birds, especially when they are feeding, are a challenge for even the expert digiscopers. Feeding elk, not rutting, etc.
5. practice on good days: the more light the happier your digiscoping rig is going to be, and the better the images you will bring home (except for those egrets in full sun).
6. count them: that is three “practice”s. Here is another: practice.
7. don’t show your images to anyone until you have one that you can see on the cover of your favorite birding magazine: it won’t be long. Many first time digiscopers bring back such an image on their first day of digiscoping. You will be amazed.
8. Have fun. Digiscoping is an wonderful, fulfilling addition to birding or wildlife watching. It makes it possible to capture those images you have only dreamed of…and, once more, with a minimal investment, and minimal extra gear, beyond the spotting scope you already use for observation.

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