Birds of a different feather

Recently I took a trip to Hawaii. I was bit by two bugs, so to speak. First was surfing. Love it. But then I went up and down the beach looking at the surf lesson shops and their photo equipment. The best as a Canon 30D connected to a 400 2.8L.

I want to get into this. But I cannot afford a 400L, nor am I happy getting a 70-300 consumer lens. So I have been looking into a refractor or reflector telescope connected with a t-conn/EOS.

So you can see why I have posted in birds, you guys are more likely to know about the telescope possibilities. Yes I understand this is manual focus.

What do you make of these?
http://www.telescope.c​om/control/product/~ca​tegory_id=refractors/~​pcategory=telescopes/~​product_id=09946

http://www.telescope.c​om/control/product/~ca​tegory_id=reflectors/~​pcategory=telescopes/~​product_id=09798

Is a refractor better then a reflector?


Then theres optical tubes?

No one knows about using telescopes for lenses?

The reflector is not going to be any good for birds or much of anything else but stars and planets. It's way too big and bulky to carry around. And that particular refractor isn't the proper scope for camera work. You need either florite glass, or APO coatings, prefferably both. The Orion APO ED-80 is a good one, which I owned and used, but it was just to big and bulky to use comfortably, so I didn't use it much.

Google "digiscoping", and check out some of the links. Here is one good one to get started with buying links on the right.

I have been looking into using spotting scopes with a decent point and shoot, which is a lot cheaper then using big scopes with big DSLR's and big tripods. You don't need all that to get some really great images, which is what it's all about.

Take a look at Nighthound and strgazr27's posts. Both are more than adept at astro photography. Make me wish I could afford another obsession.