For many digiscopers and other outdoor photographers, their craft isn’t just about clicking off images and videos with their smartphone. It’s an endeavor ripe with hot and cold temperatures and long treks. Indeed, most of this bunch are sportsmen, hikers, outdoor influencers, and more. They don’t mind getting their hands dirty and muscles sore.
Then, there are the challenges of viewing from uneven ground. And this includes everything from slight grades to more extreme slopes.
Phone Skope’s Mag360 digiscoping system represents a significant advancement in the field of wildlife observation and photography. Like all Phone Skope systems, this innovative kit seamlessly connects smartphones with optics, allowing users to capture remarkable photos and videos of flora and fauna in the spaces they roam. Designed for both amateurs and professional enthusiasts, the Mag360 offers versatility, as users can quickly attach their smartphones to various spotting scopes and binoculars.
Stoutly constructed, it’s ideal for the more adventurous crowd. Again, we’re talking about not only birders and photographers, but backcountry hunters, hikers, and campers. This is a good thing because these activities require robust equipment.
But the new Mag360 also solves the problems of viewing from sloped terrain. That is, capturing images from land features such as hillsides, mountainsides, and sloped creek and river banks.
How to Digiscope on Steep Slopes and Uneven Terrain
It comes down to a couple of challenges for those trying to capture that rare bird or trophy animal: rapid connection and seamless transitions. As the Cornell Lab’s bird photography tips demonstrate, photographing wildlife from uneven terrain presents its own challenges.
All digiscopers understand the importance of the fast, stealth action needed to capture a live subject in the moment. While making the connections is achieved more quickly with practice, angled terrain adds yet another needed adjustment: the act of hurriedly adjusting tripod legs to account for the grade. As GOHUNT explains in its tripod leveling tips, a stable, properly leveled setup is important for long-distance glassing. It can be a huge barrier to success.
Do you ever find yourself scrambling to adjust your tripod to account for the slope where you sit or stand? Switching between landscape and portrait video modes becomes smooth without binding or misaligning your phone camera over the glass.
The Mag360’s ability to smoothly twist the smartphone camera maintains both centering and aspect ratio, meaning you don’t have to sacrifice image quality when viewing from a slope.
When you are glassing or filming on steep mountainsides or uneven hills, setting up your gear presents specific challenges that the MAG360 solves:
- Tripod Limits? No Problem: On a steep slope, getting your tripod completely level can be a tedious chore, and panning across the hillside often yields a crooked horizon. The MAG360 allows you to simply twist the phone itself to square up the horizon instantly, achieving a level shot far beyond what your tripod legs or fluid head can achieve on their own.
- No Wrestling with Your Setup: All digiscopers are aware of the once-necessary act of fighting their setup amid uneven ground. Traditional friction or snap-on adapters are rigid. If your shot, like the slope, is crooked, adjusting it requires applying physical force, which can move the tripod, compromise your focus, or even move your optic view entirely off the subject. With the MAG360, the phone smoothly slides along the magnetic area. This allows for effortless adjusting of the angle without disturbing your framing of the shot.
- Maintaining Center and Aspect Ratio: At the end of the day, maintaining your central focus and aspect ratio is the ticket. Even when you rotate your phone to level out a slanted hillside view, the magnetic connection ensures your phone’s camera stays perfectly centered over the optic’s eyepiece, preventing warped distortion and vignetting while zooming.
FIELD TIP: Glassing on Uneven Terrain
Before setting up on a hillside, find stable footing for your tripod and position your spotting scope toward your subject. Once you’ve framed your shot, use the MAG360 to rotate your smartphone and level the horizon without moving your optic. It’s a simple adjustment that can make all the difference when capturing wildlife on steep terrain.
Hillside digiscoping is a challenge. The Phone Skope Mag 360 easily provides leveling forcapturing images and videos
Want to learn more about the technology behind the MAG360? Explore our MAG360 magnetic digiscoping system overview to discover its features, compatibility, and how to upgrade your existing Phone Skope kit.
Whether you’re glassing elk on a steep mountainside, photographing birds along a riverbank, or capturing wildlife from uneven ground, the Phone Skope MAG360 gives you the flexibility to adjust your shot without fighting your setup.
Defy the incline and capture the moment. Explore the Phone Skope MAG360 and get more out of every digiscoping adventure.