I fitted a short zoom, compact digital camera to the digiscoping adaptor. With a washer of rubber inner tube. To stop the camera sliding about on the adjustable, plastic stage. The whole adaptor thing is a bit of a fiddle.
Roof at 170 yards.
Vixen 90mm F:11 with 26mm Meade Plossl eyepiece.
The "Universal Digiscoping Adaptor" is certainly useful but is seriously flawed by the sloppiness in the adjustable slides. Clamping, with the locking knob provided, usually results in gross misalignment. So it has to be unclamped, re-adjusted and then clamped again. Resulting in further misalignment!
Despite all this the adaptor does at least supply a firm base for the camera relative to the eyepiece. Once clamped in place one can easily focus the telescope and zoom the camera if desired. Provided the adaptor does not unscrew the eyepiece barrel using all its mechanical advantage and gross imbalance. Just tightening the thumbscrews sufficiently on the 1 1/4" star diagonal is quite a problem!
Interestingly, the camera lens becomes shorter when zoomed to "Telephoto." So at least there is no risk of damaging the camera lens by hitting the eyepiece. Zooming pushes the dark corners of vignetting out of the frame. Wide angle produces a clear circle of light slightly smaller than the frame. That circle may not be central in the frame without further adjustment.
In a perfect world one could clamp the camera in place, align the adaptor perfectly and just leave it there. But the battery has to be recharged at intervals. Which means removing the camera from the adaptor stage. Unless, of course, one powers the camera with a separate power supply.
Unfortunately the sun went behind solid cloud cover as soon as I was set up. So I took a few snaps of the neighbourhood instead. The light wasn't very bright and the mounting was sloppy. So I probably lost some detail to camera shake. Note the dark corner in the image above. This image has been cropped to reduce its impact. Though the shadow is still there even after 20 minutes of frustrating, fine adjustment!
Click on any image for an enlargement.
