A typical binocular spotting scope, soon to become a nifty telephoto lens.

If you are visiting some open space district or county or state park where public telescopes like the one shown in the photo on the left.  You might be able to use your digital camera to make shots of remarkably distant objects.  I have tried this once before using a binocular spotting scope at a pond long ago, but this time I decided to try and document it.

You can take pictures through one of these things and, while the quality may not be fantastic, the magnification will be remarkable.  You will need a digital camera with an optical zoom lens.  I have not tried this with digital zoom and my guess is that this won’t work if you use digital zoom.  My camera is a trusty old Olympus SP-350.  Mine is equipped with a mount that surrounds the lens, and has threading on the top for a skylight filter.  But I suspect this will work with most smaller digital cameras.  SLR format cameras are probably too large to do this, but

Step One: set the zoom on your camera to maximum magnification.

Step Two: Aim the binoculars at whatever it is you want to photograph.

Step Three: Carefully put your camera up to one of the eyepieces of the binoculars. You should see an image on the LED display on the back of your camera.

Step Four: You should be able move the camera a little bit  to center the image on what you want to shoot.

Step Five: Many digital cameras have an autofocus trigger where you depress the shutter part way and the camera locks the focus and exposure.  Do this, then press the rest of the way to shoot the picture.

How effective is this method?   Here is a shot I took of a duck at the Lucy L. Evans Interpretive Center, Palo Alto Baylands last Sunday:

A picture of a duck taken with my Olympus SP-350 at maximum zoom.

Now compare that shot with this one, taken through one half of the binocular:

A picture of a duck taken with my Olympus SP-350 at maximum zoom.

I’ve cropped the shot a little, but the size of the bird has not been changed other than through the magnification I got through the binocular (monocular?).  The color is a little bit washed over, but it’s still a pretty good shot considering it was held by hand up against a binocular that wasn’t lockable into one position.

I got this idea from something I read many years ago in Colin Fletcher’s The Complete Walker, a classic how-to on backpacking.  In it he described a bracket he had that would allow him to mate one tube of his binoculars with the front of his trusty film camera, allowing him to take telephoto shots without lugging an extra lens around with him.

Next time you are someplace with one of these binoculars and you have your digital camera handy, try this trick.