Phone Scoping - 26 Sep 2018

I had a few minutes this evening to play with the iPhone 7 and a Phone-Skope® digiscoping adapter. The phone fits snugly in the adapter and works quite well when attached to the 25-60X eyepiece of the Swarovski STX85 scope.  A Chipmunk made an appearance 15' away, and posed nicely in the late afternoon sunlight. All I had to do was touch the phone screen at the location of its eye and squeeze the $5 bluetooth remote to capture multiple images in seconds.

It was almost too sunny for the pair of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds still in the yard. The sun glared off of their iridescent feathers. But, it also displayed the shortcomings of a tiny sensor in a smartphone. You can see the watercolor-effect at full screen resolution. Images look mottled when magnified. Disappointingly mottled.

However, it is important to note that images are remarkably good for such a small sensor. So, if one cannot afford a $1000 digiscoping camera for digiscoping then using a smartphone is a great option for getting some nice images of birds and nature. Just check out Robert Wilson's phone-scoping efforts on Facebook. Noone does phone-scoping better!