As I posted earlier, you can use a smartphone with your guide’s scope to get a shot of a bird you can’t find with your own camera. Some people take the art of digiscoping to a much higher level and buy gadgets to attach a smartphone to a scope like this one.
I don’t recommend attaching your adaptor to a guide’s scope unless you have hired a private guide as it’s not fair to the others in your group. You could always buy your own scope but they are not cheap!
Here’s how the pros do it.
As I was reminiscing about our trip to Cristalino back in 2012, I was thinking about the one photo op that got away. As we were on top of the Canopy Tower, our guide (we were put with 6 other tourists) managed to get a rare Hawk-headed Parrot in his scope view. It was REALLY far away, nestled in one tree out of a million trees. The guide had seen him fly in and had very keen eye sight and was able to locate the bird which seemed like a miracle to me. I lined up with the other people in the group to have a look through the scope which actually gave a decent view of the parrot. Of course I wanted a photo but try as I might, I just couldn’t find the exact tree with that bird! All the trees were blurred into each other in a sea of green.
What I didn’t know back then, but found out in a later trip to Costa Rica is that I could have used my iPhone to get a photo of the bird through the scope. I had seen professional photographers attaching their DSLRs to a scope but had never thought about putting a smart phone up to one. In Costa Rica, even normal tourists (as opposed to dedicated birders) like to see Resplendent Quetzals. Most of them only had standard point & shoot cameras incapable of getting a good shot of a Quetzal in a distant tree so they were holding their small cameras or smartphones up to the guide’s scope! The photos won’t be great but at least you have SOMETHING!
In case you find yourself in this situation, here is how it’s done.