Anyone up on digiscoping?

[nmerc_photos]

After a recent trip to Yellowstone, while watching wolves a mile or more out - I saw that images from my 600TC + 2x + 1.4x were garbage compared to the guys digiscoping with their phones and swarovski scopes.

I think the one guy I spoke to the most was using an ATX 95mm setup and his 4k 60 fps phone footage was incredible.

I started down the rabbit hole of research, and figured I'd come to the experts and see if anyone has experience with digiscoping.

I saw one post on this forum from 2021 with not much traction. I've found various other forums, but a lot of them are budget constrained or just very old.

For anyone with experience - if budget was no constraint, what setup would you get?

What factors are most important?

Is Swarovski really the end all be all, or are there any other brands that can compete?

Anything you wished you knew when you started? Buy once, cry once?

If you have any good youtubers or forums with info as well, I'm more than happy to do my own research - just figured I'd start here.

Cheers

 

[jeffnles1]

I have a friend who uses a Swarovski scope and an iPhone. He uses it mainly during the waterfowl migration when ducks and other waterfowl are usually pretty far out on the water. His images are quite good. He said if he needs to cop in more than just a little, the cell phone pictures fall apart faster than the ones from his D850.

I don't know much about the other scopes. I have used Swarovski, Kowa, and Vortex when spotting during long range target shooting competitions. Kowa scopes have always seemed nice, Vortex are good durable scopes, but the ones I've used are not up to the Swarovski. I have a Vortex scope and it is more than clear enough for spotting holes in paper out past 200 yards but it has quite a bit of chromatic aborations (sp??) ie purple / blue fringing.

 

[nmerc_photos]

I have a friend who uses a Swarovski scope and an iPhone. He uses it mainly during the waterfowl migration when ducks and other waterfowl are usually pretty far out on the water. His images are quite good. He said if he needs to cop in more than just a little, the cell phone pictures fall apart faster than the ones from his D850.

I don't know much about the other scopes. I have used Swarovski, Kowa, and Vortex when spotting during long range target shooting competitions. Kowa scopes have always seemed nice, Vortex are good durable scopes, but the ones I've used are not up to the Swarovski. I have a Vortex scope and it is more than clear enough for spotting holes in paper out past 200 yards but it has quite a bit of chromatic aborations (sp??) ie purple / blue fringing.

does your friend have an instagram or flickr or something with his digiscoping pictures? I'd love to see.

I started looking into digiscoping a few years ago, and at the time the answer was generally that a 600 f4 + TC's was better. but technology moves so fast and I was blown away by what I saw this year in Yellowstone, so it reopened the idea for me.

we were using some sort of $500 Vortex scope and just manually holding up our phones and it worked well, but nothing to the level that I saw.

 

[jeffnles1]

does your friend have an instagram or flickr or something with his digiscoping pictures? I'd love to see.

I started looking into digiscoping a few years ago, and at the time the answer was generally that a 600 f4 + TC's was better. but technology moves so fast and I was blown away by what I saw this year in Yellowstone, so it reopened the idea for me.

we were using some sort of $500 Vortex scope and just manually holding up our phones and it worked well, but nothing to the level that I saw.

I just checked his Flickr page and it says nothing made public. I looked at his Facebook and just a lot of photos of a vacation he and his girlfriend went on. He is not very active on social media. I don't recall seeing him post any of his photos, all I saw were on his phone. They looked good to me but it was on a phone I haven't seen any on a big full size monitor.

My Vortex scope was probably around $500. It is a 20-60X Vortex Diamondback. It's "good enough" but not like the 3,000 - 5,000 kind of scopes I see some guys sporting at the ranges and out in the field.

If there were an adaptor (and there may be, just not sure) to attach your mirrorless or DSLR to the spotting scope, the photos may be spectacular. However, I think the phone's sensor is going to be the limiting factor although some of the most recent phones are pretty amazing in what they can do.

 

[MartyD]

We spend a week each June in Yellowstone primarily wolf watching. We have a Vortex scope that works well for us and we have a Phone Scope iPhone case on one of our iPhones. The Phone Scope cases are custom to the spotting scope and specific phone so it makes it easier to align the phone to the spotting scope. You will see many of the wildlife guides now just setting up their spotting scopes with iPhone attached for their clients. I would say that the latest Swarovski spotting scopes are excellent but the top Vortex spotting scopes are also good. We usually just take a few images or videos to send off to our grandkids.

The latest is small digital cameras that you can connect to your spotting scope that connect via WiFi or BT to an iPad. We encountered one wildlife guide in Yellowstone who had this setup and his elderly clients sat in the van and watched wolves.

 

[jeffnles1]

We spend a week each June in Yellowstone primarily wolf watching. We have a Vortex scope that works well for us and we have a Phone Scope iPhone case on one of our iPhones. The Phone Scope cases are custom to the spotting scope and specific phone so it makes it easier to align the phone to the spotting scope. You will see many of the wildlife guides now just setting up their spotting scopes with iPhone attached for their clients. I would say that the latest Swarovski spotting scopes are excellent but the top Vortex spotting scopes are also good. We usually just take a few images or videos to send off to our grandkids.

The latest is small digital cameras that you can connect to your spotting scope that connect via WiFi or BT to an iPad. We encountered one wildlife guide in Yellowstone who had this setup and his elderly clients sat in the van and watched wolves.

I haven't used any of the higher end Vortex scopes. Mine is one of the lower / mid tier Diamondback series. It is impressive for the price. I could imagine the high end ones are probably rivaling the Kowa and Swarovski scopes and usually at a lower price. I just cannot say from personal experience. Thanks for adding your perspective in. Always good for folks to hear from real-world users.

 

[nmerc_photos]

We spend a week each June in Yellowstone primarily wolf watching. We have a Vortex scope that works well for us and we have a Phone Scope iPhone case on one of our iPhones. The Phone Scope cases are custom to the spotting scope and specific phone so it makes it easier to align the phone to the spotting scope. You will see many of the wildlife guides now just setting up their spotting scopes with iPhone attached for their clients. I would say that the latest Swarovski spotting scopes are excellent but the top Vortex spotting scopes are also good. We usually just take a few images or videos to send off to our grandkids.

The latest is small digital cameras that you can connect to your spotting scope that connect via WiFi or BT to an iPad. We encountered one wildlife guide in Yellowstone who had this setup and his elderly clients sat in the van and watched wolves.

back in 2021 we had some great viewing of wolf dens, and I had my 600mm + 2x just zoomed in and let people watch from the back of the camera. I envisioned it would be fun to output the image to a small 32" TV that I could wear so others could enjoy..

being able to connect via wifi or BT to an ipad so clients can watch in the van sounds like a much better version of that idea haha

I'd definitely like to learn more about that, because my first thought when I saw the phone setups was - man this would be great if it was a 13" ipad instead so more people could see it at once