telescope

I purchased this telescope a number of years ago from an individual who took the lenses from old copy machines and used them as the front lens for a telescope. The lenses are quite large for the price of them. And because they are big, they gather a lot of light into the telescope.

I also managed to pick up a few of these surplus copier lenses myself. The lenses were of different sizes. The lens in this telescope is the smallest, but it came already mounted as a telescope. One of the lenses was really large, twice as large as this one. The lens in this telescope was made in West Germany by Zeiss and so is of a very high quality.

The telescope came with an eyepiece which I believe was of orthoscopic design. Orthoscopic eyepieces are common and inexpensive. I always prefer an eyepiece of Erfle design because of the eye relief that this design provides. These eyepieces are large and expensive but worth every penny (or should I say dollar).

I wanted to see if I could do nature photography with this telescope by holding my digital camera up to the eyepiece. I tried and tried but I wasn’t really satisfied with the results.

I was trying to get a picture of the squirrel feeder attached to the side of the tree. I had to rotate the picture to get the tree straight up and down and that is why the edges of the picture look so funny. So I guess that it is back to the drawing board as they say and scratch my head to see if I can come up with some more ideas on how to get nicer pictures. It is always fun trying to come up with a solution to solve a problem, a challenge. Someone once told me that nothing is impossible, we just haven’t come up with a solution yet. I think that is true. Have a nice day wherever you may be. Lew