Digital Cameras

The pictures to the right show my Sony DSC-S70 assembly.

The kit purchased comprises two elements, the Sony converter collar plus a superfluous ring that can be fitted to an eyepiece which does not have a fixing thread. Care though, this latter ring can damage the eyepiece when the grub screws are tightened.

In all the kit was a bit of a rip-off at £90. I'm sure that I could have found the larger adaptor for a fraction of the price!

The next two pictures show the camera and the components both "exploded" and assembled.

You will see the Maxview40 - the other ring, below the eyepiece unit, is the rubber eyepiece protector which needs to be removed. It is advisable to focus the telescope with the Maxview ocular attached before coupling it to the camera.

The assembly was attached to my C5 telescope simply by slipping the 1.25 coupler into the diagonal. Once the telescope was lined up with the sun, its image was entered using a slo-mo gearing attached to the tripod head. I used a 1000 Oaks 2+ filter on the front end of the telescope which gave a pleasing orange image.

Taking the pictures was done using the camera's 10sec timer facility. Pressing the camera trigger half-way performs the automatic processes and an audible warning sounds when this is completed. Depressing the trigger fully takes the picture. 10sec timer gives more than enough time for any tripod instability to settle.

The results can be seen below.

The only real problem with this arrangement is that the LCD panel on the back of the camera tends to be overwhelmed by the bright sunlight, which is unfortunate because all camera settings are displayed there and not in the view finder. A small LCD display on the top of the camera gives some information but not nearly enough. The problem was overcome to a certain extent by the use of a small bellows-like screen but it is a bit cumbersome.

Finally, the Minolta illustrated here on the left and supported by a

slo-mo gearing unit, merely had the Maxview40 fitted to the cameras 49mm screw filter thread using a step-down ring. The supplied kit cost £60 - how much is a 49mm-42mm step-down ring? Hardly that much!

The main problem with this arrangement was its weight and consequent strain on the slo-mo unit.