What is Digiscoping or Phonescoping?

Digiscoping is a terribly named photography technique of using some form of digital camera with a spotting scope or a pair of binoculars to take pictures. Most people do this with their smartphones. Here is my current set up:

Years ago digiscoping was popular with birders who didn't want to take huge cameras out in the field, but wanted a chance to document a life bird or rarity by lining up a point and shoot camera with their scope. Point and shoot cameras were inexpensive, could fit in a jacket pocket and were great for taking photos of your friends and landscape as well as snapping a few photos with your spotting scope. Here’s my first digiscoping set up.

From there, some digiscopers gravitated to using digital SLR cameras along with a spotting scope to get fantastic shots of birds. Spotting scope companies started making adapters to get something like a Nikon D40 with a 50mm lens to work the eyepiece of the spotting scope. Allowing you to still look at birds and wildlife through the scope but to also take pictures of what you saw. You use the scope for the zoom and the focus. Digital SLRs are more expensive and require a little bit more camera knowledge than point and cameras, but once you figured out the settings, the possibilities were endless--especially when SLRs started to add the ability to take HD video! Though this photography technique can get you great wildlife shots, it's primarily for people who are wildlife watchers first and photographers second.

Eventually, I went this route in my photography and I got some great results. I love my Nikon V1 mirrorless camera with the Swarovski TLS APO adapter to slide over my scope. I got some incredible photos with it.

I was happy with my set up until I got my very first smartphone, an iPhone 4. I had seen people try to line up photos and wondered how it would work. I was at a friend’s house taking photo of their tufted titmice and held my iPhone 4 up to my spotting scope and this image just handholding it.

I was impressed. Sure, it took some practice to line up the photo, but that being the very first image I got shocked me. I was curious to try it out. Not long after this photo was taken, I went on a birding trip to northern Israel to experience the crane migration. We went out early in the morning in what were essentially bleachers being pulled by a tractor. Unlike the cranes in Kearney, NE, the cranes in Israel are used to farm equipment and at dawn they will drive you around among the flocks to get photos—it’s incredible!

As we went out in the early dawn hours, the lighting was terrible for photography. It was cold, foggy, and the tractor caused so much shake, I wasn’t getting good photos at all with my SLR set up. The fog and the cranes were beautiful though and I thought I would see what my iPhone 4 could do;

You might recognize that image as my header photo. I couldn’t believe how amazing the photo turned out! I decided to test holding up the iPhone to my scope’s eyepiece—all in low light and with the all the vibrations from the tractor all while handholding the phone and got this:

I’ve taken many bird photos of the years and there are many Iove, but this is my favorite. When I got this picture, I knew I wouldn’t be using my SLR much longer. If a phone could do this in low light and shaky conditions, what could it do in great light? I’ve had “real” photographers roll their eyes with my smartphone photography set up over the years, but my photos taken with smartphones have been published in books and magazines and the above photo was used in a slideshow and incorrectly credited to a National Geographic photographer. This photo represents that sometimes we just need to play around with our equipment and we can capture a beautiful moment.

With every new generation of smartphones, the cameras just get better and better. And now we have a plethora of cases and adapters to use. Personally, I like PhoneSkope—I’ve used them for years and their current carbon fiber cases are great. It’s a cool looking day to day case and I can easily slip the cut that attaches to my scope on and off. It’s slick and easy to use. I like how PhoneSkope will let you pick the make and modes of your scope or binoculars and the make and model of the phone and it’s made for your set up. There are many universal adapters out there, but they tend to be futzy. And the seconds it takes to get things realigned are plenty of seconds for a bird to fly away.

People often as me me about digibinning or digiscoping with your binoculars. I find it frustration, but it is possible especially with the help of a blue tooth shutter release. Here’s my friend Renner Anderson demonstrating his system: