Celestron Angled Zoom Spotting Scope, Black, 9-27X56Mm Micro, 52310

Small and light were at the top of our list of must haves and the Hummingbird seemed to check a lot of boxes even though the smallish 56 mm objective was a compromise. Our decision was whether to get the standard Hummingbird or the one with an ED element, which was twice the price. We chose the standard model and are very satisfied. Mounted on a trekking pole that incorporates a tripod mount, the spotting scope is a lightweight and useful tool for our walks in the woods.

Estoy encantada con la compra. Buena relación calidad-precio.

Easy to deploy on the range without hassle of oversize unit. Crystal clear image.

Good quality

I bought this scope do use for duty scoping or taking photographs through the scope with my cell phone while on a trip to Alaska. I haven’t gone to Alaska yet but I practiced in my backyard. I wanted to see how much closer I could actually get too far away animals but we’re perhaps at the distance that we might be seeing bears or whales on our trip. In the photos attached I compare an image fully zoomed out on my iPhone XR, fully zoomed in into the digital zoom range in which you can see how much resolution is lost, and then, zoomed out but using The Celestron hummingbird as a digit scope. And one set of pictures I am zooming in on a neighbors aluminum siding wall that is about 180 feet away. In another image I’m zooming in on a rusty satellite dish atop a building that is a city block away where I live in Brooklyn. You can see that I can get incredible detail and much higher resolution using the digi scope set up and taking a picture using my phone with an adapter, through the hummingbird. The adapter I used was theGosky smart phone digiscoping adapter sold on amazon. Of note, I also used a tripod as there is absolutely no way to find the image and focusing on it without one. I also used a small Bluetooth shutter release button that I got for about seven bucks on Amazon and synced with my phone using Bluetooth so that I didn’t shake the phone while pressing the screen to take an image.So that’s the good news. Great quality images of objects far away are possible. I will say however that there is some color flowering that happens with the scope. There’s a fancy name for it if you understand optics. It is apparently diminished using an ED version of the same hummingbird scope, apparently ED signifies a fancy and expensive lens coding that they offer as an option, but that was $150 more. I decided I could put up with it.The most challenging aspect of this is that it’s hard to find things through the scope. The angle of the scope is good for attaching the phone and using the phone as the screen but when you are trying to zoom in on and focus on a bear for example, I don’t think that I could do that using my screen. I need to look with my eyes and find the object and focus. Then I had to attach the phone to the scope. Then you have to zoom in a little bit because otherwise the image is a circle with black around the edges as is the case with all spotting scopes but when you zoom in just a bit you can get a full screen image. Some more fiddling with the focus was then necessary. Anytime you touch the phone or the scope while it’s on the tripod you knock the image out of the frame and have to readjust. So at the end of the day I’m not sure if this is going to be practical unless a bear is extremely accommodating and stands completely still while I miss around for about a minute. It certainly wouldn’t work for birds. I’m not sure it will work for Whales. Because of one popped up off to the right by the time I got my scope fixed on where it was and try to focus it would be somewhere else.I really wish there was a way to zoom in more with my iPhone. I don’t want to buy a fancy camera and a fancy zoom lens and learn how to use them just for my trip. So I will bring the set up. It’s fairly lightweight and portable although once you add the tripod along I certainly won’t be bringing it on a hike. but when I am viewing wild animals from our expedition ship or from a stationary location at a wilderness lodge for example, it might work.