Phone Skope Experimenting

[RednekF350]

Well if one thing is for sure, I can always procrastinate tomorrow.
I finally got around to toying around with Phone Scope at Cape May this weekend. I think I have only had it for a year now.
I am very pleased with the results. I am using a Redfield 20-60x x 80mm spotter and an iPhone 6.
The only editing is a slight rotation to get to level and I kicked the brightness down a hair. The birds were 150- 200 yards away. The first pic is a swan with a downy fledgling at her feet.

 

[Boyd]

Vice nice Scott!

 

[46er]

Good stuff. Digiscoping has come a long way since I first tried it. You can see a marked difference in sharpness. Great shots.

One of my attempts from 2003. Pentax PF-80ED, also 20-60X, and Nikon CoolPix 995. Golden Eagle and chick, 2003, Eagle Nest Rock, north entrance road YNP.

From where taken, about 150 yds.

 

[manumuskin]

Good stuff. Digiscoping has come a long way since I first tried it. You can see a marked difference in sharpness. Great shots.

One of my attempts from 2003. Pentax PF-80ED, also 20-60X, and Nikon CoolPix 995. Golden Eagle and chick, 2003, Eagle Nest Rock, north entrance road YNP.

From where taken, about 150 yds.

Is the second picture Limestone? I swear it looks like cave rock.but I have seen pics of sandstone out west eroded the same way.

 

[46er]

Is the second picture Limestone? I swear it looks like cave rock.but I have seen pics of sandstone out west eroded the same way.

Don't know, but there is a lot of it. Check GE road view. It is in the northwestern part of the park, outside of the caldera. The arrow points to the approx. location below.

 

[manumuskin]

There shouldn't be any Limestone in the Caldera for sure But I know Wyoming and Montana have the deepest limestone caves in the country.Not that the beds are that thick but their tilted so the caves are actually very deep because their going down dip.Not sure just where the Limestone is but since the pic was taken in the Northern Rockies I'd say it's Limestone.Only Place I"ve seen sandstone that heavily eroded by water is the Southwest or I should say that water smoothed look. perhaps because there is not as much frost wedging to break the rock up like here.

 

[46er]

There shouldn't be any Limestone in the Caldera for sure But I know Wyoming and Montana have the deepest limestone caves in the country.Not that the beds are that thick but their tilted so the caves are actually very deep because their going down dip.Not sure just where the Limestone is but since the pic was taken in the Northern Rockies I'd say it's Limestone.Only Place I"ve seen sandstone that heavily eroded by water is the Southwest or I should say that water smoothed look. perhaps because there is not as much frost wedging to break the rock up like here.

I'll ask a friend who should know. Pretty sure the erosion is wind caused, although the Gardner River runs thru there alongside the road up to Gardner MT. Not much of a valley though.

 

[RednekF350]

Thanks Boyd and 46er.

The main reason I got the Phone Skope attachment was to get more use out of my spotter. I really only ever use it for sighting rifles a few times a year.

It’s fun but a little cumbersome getting a picture framed and ready to shoot with this type of setup. I felt like a one-armed, one-eyed paper hanger. Polarized sunglasses can't be worn because you can’t see the phone screen and I also have to wear dime store cheaters to see the screen at all. I am not doing well with this age thing.

 

[46er]

The early stuff was horrendous, especially using the Coolpix. It has an offset swivel lens and the early adapters could not hold the offset weight. Was always swiveling around on the scope unless it was constantly held, but it was a great little camera, still is. It was one of the very few that had a threaded lens collar.

They make an inexpensive wireless shutter release for smartphones that may help you.

Coolpix 995

 

[Boyd]

My first digital camera (back in 1999) was a Nikon CoolPix 900, which was their first camera with that swivel design. A couple years later I replaced it with a CoolPix 990 which looked pretty much the same as your 995. These were great cameras and I often remember how much fun I had discovering digital photography with them.

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/others/900/index.htm
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/others/990/

 

[46er]

At the time, they were the inexpensive gold standard for macro photography and easy on the back as well. I still occasionally use mine for those reasons.

 

[46er]

I'll ask a friend who should know. Pretty sure the erosion is wind caused, although the Gardner River runs thru there alongside the road up to Gardner MT. Not much of a valley though.

Al, Here is the response, sandstone.

"You are correct. It is Eagle Sandstone, from the Cretaceous Period, about 100 million years ago. It's one of four different sedimentary layers that in total are 3,500 feet thick in that area. Mt. Everts is almost all comprised of these 4 layers, with the exception of the Huckleberry Ridge tuff cap on the top of the south end of the mountain.

Much of this material was deposited in a marine environment. What has not received much publicity is the story of the seagoing dinosaur fossilized skeleton that was discovered several decades ago on the north side of Mt. Everts. It was a cousin of the plesiosaurus."

 

[RednekF350]

They make an inexpensive wireless shutter release for smartphones that may help you.

Thanks to Youtube and various how-to videos, I learned that if you plug your earphones into the earphone jack on the iPhone the volume control switch on the earphone wire acts as a shutter release ! I have tried it and it does work. I showed that trick to woman who had a Phone Skope last fall at the Lighthouse and she looked at me as if I had just invented fire.

I forgot to bring my earphones the other day. They would have probably improved the picture quality even more. I was fighting scope and tripod vibration due to wind and compounding that by touching the screen shutter.

 

[46er]

I was fighting scope and tripod vibration due to wind and compounding that by touching the screen shutter.

That's the problem with that kind of magnification, your probably at around 1000mm with the scope set at 60x. Another problem are heat shimmers, bugs and branches in the way. The autofocus has a hard time with that, and you can't see it.

I learned that if you plug your earphones into the earphone jack on the iPhone the volume control switch on the earphone wire acts as a shutter release !

You have to be careful not to wear the earphones or your eyes will blink when you hit the switch