The Hawke Spotting Scope Smartphone Adapter is an useful tool that makes it easy to take photographs of objects at long range. Think the 100-Yard targets at Extreme Benchrest, for example.
The company says that it will fit spotting scopes, monoculars and binoculars with an eyepiece diameter of between 33 and 60 mm (1.3 to 2.4 Inches).
Buoyed by a long history of failure at successfully taking photographs through optical devices using a cellphone, I decided to make a “quick and dirty” test of this interesting little device.
So I pulled-out a Hawke Endurance ED 25-25 x 85 spotting scope and attached it to a solid tripod. Then I pushed-in the rubber eyepiece cup and focused the scope to be sharp on a distant tree.
Having done that, I attached my iPhone to the Adapter. There was no need to remove the phone’s rubber protective case for this.
Then I adjusted it’s position so as to be able to see clear through the hole in the center. This was easily done after a little wriggling and the phone then stayed in place, gripped by the adapter’s clamp mechanism.
Then I clamped the assembled Adapter plus phone over the end of the spotting scope’s eyepiece. This was a simple matter of pushing-in the outer grips of the eyepiece clamp, locating the Adapter plus phone over the eyepiece and releasing the clamp grips to do their work.
(By the way, this is not exactly how they tell you to do it in the instructions, but I did what seemed logical to me).
Bingo! It worked :-)
Using the phone, I zoomed-in to make the image cover the whole of the phone’s screen. Then just a little touch of the spotting scope’s fine focus control and I had a nice, sharp image on the phone. Click!
I can honestly say that this is the first time I have ever been able to set-up my phone to take photographs through any optical device so quickly and easily. In fact I amazed myself!
Having successfully used the Hawke Spotting Scope Smartphone Adapter, I would really like the company to make a version that fits onto the eyepiece of a riflescope. Now that would really be another useful product…
You can buy the Hawke Spotting Scope Smartphone Adapter from the company’s online store. The cost is just $34.00. Bargain!
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