Digiscoping, I first came across the term when browsing in some of the groups in the photo hosting web site “Flickr“. Digiscoping is where you attach either a film or digital camera to a large spotting/hunting scope as a powerful telephoto lens. In some cases the groups and photographers are interested in astronomy and use a different style of telescope that you would use in “star gazing”. In any case, I’d been interested in doing something like that and had a Meade astronomy telescope sitting on the shelf that I’d picked up at a Sams Club 6 or 7 years ago. The first thing was to find a camera suited to this kind of application. I like the Canon “point and shot” cameras and have several of the SD series. Canon also makes a A series point and shot camera with full manual controls for shutter speed and aperture, along with manual focusing capabilities. Plus the Canon A590 has the ability to use a ring adapter to allow the use of standard 52mm filters and some types of accessory lens. Perfect for this kind of application! I found a good forum on digiscoping and bird photography and and specifically using a astronomy style telescopes. I was able to get some of my “newbie” questions answered on what to do and were to start looking for the necessary bits and pieces that I’d need to couple a camera to my Meade telescope.
As I researched for cameras it appeared that the A590 was going to be the last of the Canon A series to have full manual function and it was going “end of life” and that it might be hard to find one. Fortunately I live in the Dallas Ft. Worth (DFW) area and Walmart had been handling this model and so after calling many of the Walmarts in the surrounding area I found a store that still had one left. Well they thought they had one. You see I caught them right in the middle of their major store remodeling and they couldn’t find it and the dept manager wasn’t in, who might know were it may have been stored. So a couple of days later I went back when the dept manager was suppose to be there. She found it and I bought it for $107, not bad considering that Amazon still showed them at $250. The next thing to get was the 52mm adapter ring.
The adapter ring is an option and the Canon brand was $25 and not readily available locally. So I found a third party one on eBay for $8. Ordered it and had it in a couple of days.
The A590 has a chrome colored ring around the lens that hides a slot that the adapter ring fits and locks into. With a small lever located at about 7 oclock, you push down on the lever and rotate the chrome ring about a quarter turn to release it. A lens cap that came with the adapter and you can continue to use the camera normally or attach any number of different filters or accessory lens.
Next I had to get two specially made couplers to go from the adapter’s 52mm threaded end to the eyepiece on my telescope. I ordered these from a website called TelescopeAdapters.com in Florida. After a couple of emails with Robert at TelescopeAdapters.com I was able to figure out what combination of couplers they sold that would work with my camera and telescope. The problem that I had was with my telescope’s eyepiece. A lot if not most eyepieces have a threaded end that is covered by a rubber eye cup. Mine didn’t and so I had to use a universal adapter or coupler on the eyepiece itself. Then a normal T-ring to go from the eyepiece adapter to the camera’s 52mm adapter. These were the pieces I ordered from TelescopeAdapters.com, the universal T Adapter part number UT1 
and a 52mm to T Step Ring part number SR52T 
After assembling the couplers onto the camera I mounted the camera onto the telescope. Looking for something that I could test the range. I set up a stand in the back driveway.
To the southwest, according to Google Earth’s measurements, 1.4 miles away is a radio tower. So I tried to get a shot of the top of it. Lots of heat wave distortion at that distance but still pretty good. I’m not looking to take pictures of things a mile and a half away but I got an idea of the capabilities of the lens. I probably will use this for close-ups in the range of 100 to 300 yards.
Eventually I’m going to try using my Nikon D70 DSLR camera and some different couplers and attach it to the back of the telescope or the rear port and bypass the telescope’s eyepiece.
