Baader Optical Wonder Cloth

Every now and then your optics need wiping and sometimes your optics have delicate coatings that you do not want to damage. Baader have created a little cloth that says to clean your lenses without damaging it.

The cloth does exactly what it says, it cleans your optics from dirt, finger prints and smudges, it is of excellent quality with fine stitching and durable in strength, having had mine for over two years it has still has shown no signs of tearing or weakening and still looks as good as it did when it came out of the box. Baader gives you a generous size cloth to work with (25x25CM) giving you a sense of purchasing a well made product.

For a £5 price tag it pretty much is an excellent accessory to get your hands on, I have found it uneccassary to use anything else or try anything else as the quality of this product is fantastic, however one must wonder when it would be time to throw it away after all the build up of grease and dirt it is still great value for money!

A Look at the Celestron Regal Spotting Scope

I have gradually upgraded my scope over the years for my never ending quest of getting better results, I started with a Camlink CSP80 a cheap, affordable scope, it did do the trick and  I wanted to see if digiscoping was for me. My thirst for sharper images caused me to spend more dough which I then bought a Celestron Ultima 80ED. A Scope that you can say is inbetween Celestron's just Ultima Range and its Regal range and then without taking any risks (getting a scope by a different brand) I bought a Celestron Regal 80 F-ED the best offered by Celestron.

The Eyepiece

Because of its 1.25 barrel the
Celestron can fit third party eyepieces

The eyepiece is different to the Ultima and the Ultima ED series of scopes. The supplied regal eyepiece feels chunkier, larger and better built with the scope itself containing a locking mechanism to secure the eyepiece into place and with this 1.25" barrel you have a large selection of third party eyepieces. 

This is a great thing since digiscoping is no place for zoom eyepieces and a wide angle lens can get rid of all that vignetting, alas, depending on the camera. Back to the supplied eyepiece Just like thier Ultima series the eyecup comes off to reveal a thread,a 52mm thread to be exact a different size to that of the ultima series but it comes with a little (and I mean little) adapter that allows you to fit anything that already fitted on your Ultima scope.

Design

The Celestron looks far from cheap, in fact it is of very sturdy build, I wouldn't reccommend dropping it but it has survived a few falls. Weighing at 2041g the weight of Celestron scopes is one of the biggest reasons why people tend tosteer away from them but with such a small price tag I do not see the weight as an issue but it can be for people of a few older generations. I have checked and the Celestron Regal 80 F-ED is only 500g heavier than the Swarovski scope. My personal opinion is that the scope is fine to carry and most of the weight is let off when it is being carried on a tripod so you will most likely not suffer a back ache.

Focusing

The regal comes with two focus knobs, one for coarse focusing and one for fine focusing. I have had some people contact me having an issue with the coarse focus knob being stiff, this is true, but, just to start with. Over time the coarse focus will loosen to a satsifactory level allowing to focus with ease, even with your pinky finger.

Image Quality

Cameras can easily attach to the
Celestron thanks to its threads

Comparing to the Ultima ED the colours are more accurate, more detailed and more focused it and it gives satisfying results. Purple fringing seldom makes itself appear and the colours are accurate when looking through the eyepiece.

As a digiscoping scope the detail it can pick it is pretty impressive given there is plenty of light and capture is at the right moment, with a few nit picks here and there considering its price tag the image quality is far from poor.


The Celestron Regal spotting scope offers tremendous value for money, and according to some third party reviews is hands down the best scope you can get for under £1000, with a few setbacks such as the weight these are nit picks and with a under £1000 price tag it would be hard to ignore such a good product.

Jackar Universal Adapter

The Jackar universal adapter as it says is a little nifty adapter that fits onto most digital compact cameras. It comes in seven pieces that connect together into a simple designed monouvrable piece of equipment.

Now I don't know if it is just me but whenever I see a picture of something I picture it to be much bigger than it actually is, this happened with the dunlin and if I didn't luckily find one I probably wouldn't ever find one on my own. The adapter is relatively small, it barely weighs anything and comes in several pieces which was my first worry, it being universal I decided to try it out on the Panasonic LS75

As soon as I tried to attach it I thought I came across a problem, the tripod bush wasn't directly underneath the camera lens however this did not matter since the clever way this thing was able to come together I was able to fit it around the Panasonic in a matter of minutes.

Note the tripod bush not being
directly under the lens

The product does not feel cheap, all parts are made out of a metal with rubber grip to hold the camera into place and With so many universal adapters out there for digiscoping this is my favourite. It is neat, tidy and easy to use and with a price tag of £20.99 by looks alone it does not look worth it but I can assure it is certainly is worth the money.

View a video of how it fits together and how universal it is click this link