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I recently got a digiscoping adapter for my small scope (100mm f/6 refractor) and camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ28), so now I can take pictures through the scope itself. The adapter just holds the camera in place right next to the eyepiece, making long exposures practical. I've found that with my particular camera, telescope, and eyepieces, the images do vignette noticeably, so this is most useful at low powers or for small objects where the narrow field of view doesn't matter so much. I took all of these shots with a 28mm Edmund RKE (21x), which has the largest eye relief and least vignetting of all my eyepieces. In most cases I used little to no zoom on the camera itself (between 1x and 2x), but in one case I used just over 10x. Here's my favorite image so far: the central portion of the Orion Nebula (M42).
And I have a few more below: The Trapezium. There was 10x optical zoom on the camera in this case. Considering this was still a longish exposure (several seconds) on a night with iffy seeing, it resolves quite well:
The Pleiades:
Nearly full Moon. The image scale here is much larger than I get when simply piggybacking the camera at full zoom. Unfortunately, because of chromatic aberration in the telescope itself, the edges are a little softer than I like. I actually converted this image to grayscale to avoid the worst of the aberration. I may try an exposure like this with a minus-violet filter sometime.
The vignetting lends itself to some artistic impressions, if done right:
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What digiscoping adapter did you use
Hi
I'm looking into doing the same with my FZ28 and a cheap 70mm refractor telescope.
Are you able post a photo of your setup and let me know what adapter you used.
Thanks
Digiscoping adapter
I use the Orion SteadyPix adapter. This clamps to the eyepiece and holds the camera in position. I have a photo of the setup here. (Apologies for the cellphone photo -- the decent camera was, as you can see, occupied at the time.)
Although this adapter does work for me, it is a little fiddly to use at times -- at least with the eyepieces I have, the camera has to be lined up almost exactly or I get severe vignetting. The vignetting is least troublesome with my lowest-power eyepiece at minimum camera zoom -- which unfortunately shows the edge of the eyepiece barrel. Fortunately, since all my shots are quite large (3MP - 10MP) I can crop that out. Also, because of the significant weight hanging off the focuser, you need to make sure your mount can handle it. Mine can -- barely. It's an Orion EQ-2 that has a weight rating 5 lbs more than my optical tube weighs -- but the effect of the camera on mount balance is much greater than you'd guess from its weight. I wouldn't want to try this with a DSLR.
This setup works quite well for Moon shots, where I can actually zoom in a bit without being bothered by vignetting, and I get significantly more magnification than with simply piggybacking the camera. For deep-sky it's more challenging and I often have to fiddle a bit to get things just right.