A pair of barn owls set up home in a very old, gnarled oak tree on a private estate adjacent to Alton Water. I wanted to photograph the owls but I could not get nearer than 100 metres from the tree along a public footpath: too far away for even the most powerful camera lens to produce a reasonable picture. I thought about digiscoping, that is using a telescope to magnify the image and then attach a camera to the telescope to take the picture. This is a relatively new idea which came about with the advent of the digital camera, which is much smaller, lighter and are capable of taking hundreds of photographs at a time. At first the camera was held to the eyepiece of the telescope but now special adaptors and compatible kits are available. As expected, using a telescope brings the subject very close from very long distances, a quarter of a mile or more. Until now digiscoping has not had a very good press as I was to learn when I visited my local shop to buy some equipment.

Having been shown some very indifferent photographs I was somewhat surprised and deflated by the answers to my queries. I recall the shopkeeper:

“You are the same as the rest of ‘em who come in ‘ere. You think you can buy cheap digiscoping equipment and get the same results as the professionals who sit in hides all day with long lenses.”

But my subjects were too far away for even the most powerful camera lenses (excluding TV camera lenses) and sitting in a hide all day would not help. Thus encouraged I decided to go ahead and purchase my equipment but from a different shop.

Recommended equipment consists of a good quality telescope (Nikon call their telescopes, fieldscopes) preferably with a wide objective lens (where the light enters the telescope) and either a 20x or 30x eyepiece.

The camera should be of the Compact variety, have about 10 million pixels, a zoom lens and, most importantly, a cable release.

An adaptor is required to fasten the camera to the telescope eyepiece. Several universal models are available.

Fortunately Nikon sell a completely compatible kit, which I purchased. It consisted of:

A Nikon ED82 Fieldscope with a 30x eyepiece. This comes in a straight or bent version (you look down through the latter). Either will work with a Compact camera.

The camera, a Nikon Coolpix P5000 with 10 million pixels (this has now been updated to P5100 with 12.5 million pixels) and a 3.5 x optical zoom with conventional (35mm equivalent) focal lengths between 36 and 126mm. Using the maximum zoom 126 mm gives an effective focal length when on the telescope of 30 x 126 = 3780mm ! (30 is the magnification of the telescope eyepiece). The longest conventional focal length on a camera is about 1,000mm.The Coolpix can also take short video clips and these are quite useful if the subject is moving excessively or you want to identify a bird on a windy day. Played back on a computer the quality is quite acceptable with an image size up to 10 x 8 cm.

Finally the Digital Camera Bracket which holds the camera to the telescope completes the package. The Nikon bracket is supplied with a manual cable release, which is essential as camera shake at such huge magnifications is an important factor. It is a pity Nikon did not build an electronic cable release into the camera as the cable release is the second most important factor after the compatibility of the equipment.

Armed with my equipment and a substantial tripod I returned to the oak tree but the owls didn’t turn up. Instead, while I was waiting a bird flew onto the uppermost branch of the oak, so far away that it appeared to be an extension of the branch rather than a bird. I took a photograph. Once home I downloaded it into the computer. It was a kestrel. The quality was astonishingly good especially considering the distance the bird was from the camera. It would not have been possible to take the picture with a conventional camera and long lens.

 This Great Crested Grebe on its nest makes an ideal subject for digiscoping as it is in a fixed position about 150 metres from a permanent hide. This picture would not have been possible with a conventional lens.

Digiscoping is only suitable for subjects that are still and remain in one place. Moving subjects are out and a tripod is essential. The procedure is to set up the telescope on a firm tripod and manually focus it very carefully on the subject to be photographed. The camera is then switched on and slid carefully onto the telescope eyepiece. The camera zoom can now be used to enlarge the image. The camera focuses automatically and there is no reason to use the camera monitor to focus but it should be used to check that the subject is positioned correctly.

Viewing the image on the camera monitor can be difficult if the sun is shining onto it. The commercial shades are good at protecting the screen from scratches but not shielding it from bright sunlight. If possible it is best to move the equipment into the shade. Failing this, view the monitor from under a black cloth (going back 100 years!). I have now taken to wearing a baseball cap with the large Donald Duck peak, which I swivel round my head so that the peak of the cap shades the monitor. To look closely at the monitor I wear a pair of high magnification (+4 dioNovember 19, 2011 9:12macists.

Like everything else it takes time to acquire technique but the trouble is well worth while as digiscoping reaches the subjects conventional cameras cannot reach.