Hi Ron,
What you are trying to achieve is called "digiscoping" and there are a couple ways to proceed depending on the camera you end up with and what you are trying to photograph.
With fixed lens digicams, especially ones with very small objective lenses and limited zoom, you can sometimes shoot through the eyepiece of the telescope with very good results depending on the optical characteristics of the telescope and the camera. This is referred to as "afocal" photography.
With a dSLR or SLR camera with a removable lens, if the telescope has a camera port (not all do) then you can use the suggested "T" adapter and "T" ring to attach the camera to the scope without an eyepiece and essentially the telescope becomes the "lens". The difference is that with the dSLR you have a fixed focal length while with the digicam used in an afocal manner you have the ability to zoom an thus have more framing latitude.
If you can say what your use will be, it would be easier to make recommendations about which type of camera would work best.
Some of the older CP series Nikon cameras such as the CP950, CP990, CP995, CP4500, etc., were very good for this type thing as were a couple Contax and Kyocera models and a few Canon models. I use a pretty wide variety of digicams and dSLR's for this purpose. It's possible to get some pretty good frames out to as much as 6,000 mm focal length light permitting.
Best regards,
Lin
Question - If I take a digital slr camera body and attach it directly
to an 82mm scope (eyepiece removed), what exactly do I now have.
Shopping for cameras and trying to understand whether it's valuable
to be able to attach the new camera to the current scope.
Thank you in advance for the lesson.
rw
