Digiscoping

When I decided to create a website on bird watching I had no idea what other interests it would lead to. Then before I knew it a new word came to my attention ... digiscoping. I wondered what in the world digiscoping was? I soon discovered it meant taking photographs (in this case, of birds) with a digital camera shooting through a spotting scope. Wow! I thought what a great idea.


So I discussed the idea with my stepdad ... who is quite a guy. He is very handy and can do just about anything. He got intrigued with the idea and decided to help me learn how to take photographs this way. Well, he has taken the project really to heart. And found himself buying his second digital camera in just a few months, along with adapters, step-up and down rings, camera mounts, etc. All these accessories are necessary to adapt our current spotting scope to work like a digiscope. (Yep, there has been enough interest in digiscoping the last few years for the manufacturers to actually design photographic equipment called ... you got it ... a digiscope.) Then he got more inventive and rigged up a remote system that takes a photo without having to press the shutter button ourselves. This will eliminate camera-shake which is the quickest way to get a blurry photo.


We've gotten this far with our digiscoping experiment thanks to the opportunity to learn from the experts when we went to the San Diego Bird Festival a couple of weeks ago. That's where we found out about what type of digital camera works best and about the adapters we'd need. Thanks to the "experts" our digiscoping project is well underway. We finally located the step rings needed to connect the camera adapter to the spotting scope. So now we are ready to experiment.


We plan to photograph a Bald Eagle's nest at Lake Henshaw this weekend. Actually, we went to look for the nest a couple of weeks ago. We found it due to some easy directions offered by another birder. However, when we went to take a look the eagles were not apparent so we questioned whether the nest had been abandonded. Well, we just recently found out that the eagle was sighted in the nest. Her mate made an appearance, too. With this confirmation we've decided to try our luck getting our first digiscoped photo this weekend. I'll post the results next time.


Now I don't want to give you the wrong impression ... the idea for this project was mine, but all the ingenuity, labor and expense has been my stepdad's. Now you can really appreciate why I said he is "quite a guy".