BowCast Blog

...pumpin it fresh y'all...D.O.C. on the mic gettin fresh y'all.

I'd love to see a comment on anyone who can give me name, title, and year of these lyrics. Think old school west coast.....

On to the topic of this post. I have noticed a few questions on digiscoping on the BowCast forums, and in all honesty, I have never had the opportunity (orthe equipment) to complete a digiscoping setup. So therefore, I was not qualified to answer, although there was some good insight included on those posts.

But that is all going to change soon as I have been talking to some of the hard core digiscopers, and it is definitely something I want do this year. I totally get stoked thinking about having both a spotting scope AND a camera together as one unified scouting tool this summer. I think of all those "spots" I have seen across the horizon or across the ridge, that give me a momentary picture through my spotting scope. I am looking to capture some of those "spots" permanantly - through digital technology.

My first inquiry about digiscoping as a scouting tool was to Shawn "Launch" Monsen from FMP. Shawn indicated (as a true tech geek would) that digiscoping was one of the coolest things he got into (as far as scouting goes) several years ago. And what better way to peak my interest by Shawn providing some pics to get me going. Below are a few of these images that Shawn captured through his Swaro 65 mm scope and Sony camera with Swaro adapter:

As a good computer geek, I started a google search on digiscoping, and have included some of the better resources I turned up. If you are interested in digiscoping at all, these links are a great place to start:

Digiscoped - although focused on the Audubon flavor, there is some great content on the what and how:

http://www.digiscoped.com/

I then moved on to some of the major optics manufacturers. They had some cool info as well.

Nikon - Nikon has both "An Introduction to Digiscoping" and "An Introducttion to Digiscoping Vol 2". Great stuff:

Nikon Digiscoping - Vol 1

http://www.nikon.com/products/sportoptics/how_to/digisco/

Nikon Digiscoping - Vol 2

http://www.nikon.com/products/sportoptics/how_to/digisco2/index.htm

Swarovski had a basic description of what digiscoping is and why it's "cool":

Swarovski Digiscoping

http://digiscoping.swarovskioptik.com/content.php?&l=en&nID=x44d9e12f1d6521.30275931&nID=x44c4c854958678.07887545

While I didn't gain a ton of insight from Leica's sight (but some really cool example pictures), I was pretty amazed to find a term called "Phone Scoping". I didn't know you could actually use your camera enabled mobile phone to digiscope....check out Leica's sight to find out how:

Leica Digiscoping

http://us.leica-camera.com/nature_observation/digiscoping/

I am curious if anyone else in the BowCast community has resources to share. If you do just post a comment to this post. I'd also be interested if this blog entry peaked anyone else's interest in digiscoping. More soon....

Aneal