Hand-Held Digiscoping - 11 Aug 2018

While on the Wildlife Drive at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (MD) last Sunday I was continually frustrated with the Osprey flying off as soon as I tried to get out of the car to digiscope them. So, on a lark, I decided to see if I could digiscope them from inside the car using the window as a prop. Despite engine vibration I was surprised at the quality of my digiscoped images without a tripod. Great Blue Herons and Eastern Kingbirds were welcomed subjects of my test.

This evening I decided to give hand-holding digiscoping a try. While sitting on the deck with my feet propped on the rails I took the Swarovski STX85, Sony a6300, Sigma 30/2.8 lens, and Digidapter™ and tried to hold it like a telephoto lens. To make focusing a bit easier I set the Sigma lens to infinity and then relied on the electronic viewfinder to gain critical focusing. The camera was set to Auto ISO at f/2.8 with a minimum shutter speed of 1/1000 sec. The camera was set to 10 fps.

I was impressed with the quality of my results. Despite over ¾ of my images slightly out of focus, I managed to capture razor-sharp images of the Chipmunks, Song Sparrows, Baltimore Orioles and Swallowtail butterflies at a distance of ~25 feet.

I will say that focus-peaking is out of the question while hand-holding. The magnification is too extreme to focus on my subject (eyes) so I have to trust my electronic viewfinder to get accurate focus. Holding the scope in my left hand I can support the tripod foot w/ the hand while focusing w/ the fingers and elbow braced against my chest. The Digidapter™ allows me to brace the camera / scope against my face, and 10 fps acts as my vibration reduction. Check out the feather detail on the House Finch at left.

This is going to be fun - I'll have to rig a harness if I decide to take it into the field. But, in the meantime it'll be a great rig for shooting from inside the car or at the hawk watch this fall!