Adventures In Astrophotography

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

I personally hate my 18mm-55mm lens that came with my Canon Rebel T3 (1100D).

You can move the focus past infinity (blah), you can get it set to infinity, then only slightly tap the camera and have it move on you. The focus ring is very loose and wobbly when I have the autofocus turned off.

It drives me up the wall some times.

oooh youve touched on something that i had a little trouble with. When i was reading up on night photography i read about making sure your lens is set on infinity, the article i was reading was telling me on my lens there should be a infinity marker. Do you think i could find it on my lenses ? Hell no .. but then i read that because the two lenses i have had the auto focus option on it (they both have the little switch for MF and AF on the side) that the lenses will not have an infinity marker.

I have the same issue as you do, the manual focus ring, the slightest of movements will make the focus ring move. I considered placing the smallest bit of sticky tape on it to hold it there or make my own marker for infinity so if it does move i can easily put it back

a reply to: eriktheawful

I use a manual focus 70-300 for my Nikon. I've found that I'll have it perfectly focused and ready to go while waiting for a plane to takeoff, I'll point it at the ground for a second, look again, and it's completely out of focus.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Those are some beautiful, stunning pictures!

Back when I was a teenager, a billion years ago, my stepfather gave me his old Nikon camera and figuring out film speed, manual focus, f-stops, exposures, etc., was a challenge and I loved it.

I never tried Astrophotagraphy though. Where we live now, it'd be a long drive to get the beautiful night views for seeing actual stars.

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

What I do for my 18mm-55mm is this:

Set it to the focal length I want. Then I point the camera at a very far and bright light, for right now, that would be Venus to the East. Both it and Mars are by each other.

Then I turn on the Live View for the camera screen on the back, and the camera has a button to do 5x magnification and then 10x. I go to 10x with Venus centered on the screen.

Then I make sure both AF and the stablizer button are OFF, or AF is set to MF.

Then I very carefully adjust the focus until Venus appears as a point as much as possible.

A piece of tape might help at that point, but when you put it on, make sure you're still looking at the bright point of light, because just the act of putting the tape on can move it out of focus.

It's a PITA. And why I'm trying to pick up lenses that are all manual focus with no AF feature.

I love astrophotography, and love being able to do some myself when I have any suitable equipment. I did some using a Canon DSLR and a 300mm telephoto lens.

It was cool being able to photograph Jupiter's Galilean moons and even get some banding detail in a blown-up image of Jupiter:



I spent a lot of time and many attempts at getting the best images of the Moon with that lens:



Proud of being able to get some detail and colour of the Orion Nebula:



One of the highlight was being able to capture a comet and its green colour:




Using a 50mm prime lens, I shot some lovely star clusters (Pleiades and Hyades):




Definitely looking into doing more of this when I get better equipment.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Great post! Your evolution transitioning from film to digital sounds very close to mine. As agonizing as it was to wait for the film to get developed, I've always felt like it was great practice for thinking through the technical aspects of photography (lightning and weather photography lead me to astrophotography - it's all about timing, settings, and little bit of luck). I also have not been able to devote the time and resources that I'd like for the last few years, but I recently dug out the Nikon, dusted her off and have been making a renewed effort.

A couple questions:

The motorized mounts tend to be a bit pricey - have you (or anyone) had tried a manual barn door mount? If so, had any luck?

What sort of filtering did you use for the eclipse shot?

Great Shots!

a reply to: Virgil Cain

I started another thread here talking about mounts and motorized mounts here (mentioning the barndoor tracker).

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I made one of the barn doors myself way back when in the 90s. It worked okay for me, but the biggest problem I had with it was: lack of a very heavy tripod to set it up on.

I don't use filters, though there are many out there to help deal with light pollution, or for other effects. The only filter I used was a solar filter for observing the sun and that was a huge filter that covered my telescope.

Got both my new 500mm telephoto lens in yesterday and my 2x converter (which makes it 1,000mm) today:





While standing outside, I heard a jetliner, and used it on it....wish I'd had my new toy on a tripod, because trying to keep that jet focused and in the frame was HARD by my shaky hands, hehehehe

Very nice .. that lens is about as big my .. leg. Sorry for the one liner, on the move at the minute so it's hard to type on my phone and keep moving at the same time

a reply to: eriktheawful

That's a lot of focal legth to use you could just use the 500mm itself or like below tight crop from a 300mm



Also iirc your camera has an aps-c sensor so the focal lentgh of that set up on your Canon is 1600mm

a reply to: wmd_2008

DOH!!!!

I forgot about that! The APS-C for my Canon T3 is 1.62x

The 2x converter was only 16 dollars and was the last one in stock......

Call me an impulsive buyer!

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: wmd_2008

DOH!!!!

I forgot about that! The APS-C for my Canon T3 is 1.62x

The 2x converter was only 16 dollars and was the last one in stock......

Call me an impulsive buyer!

Well you did ask for some tips

a reply to: eriktheawful

Awesome pictures.. now I want/need an expensive camera

a reply to: eriktheawful

what's the f stop on that monster?
Could you use it for planetary shots?

Wouldn't it be better if members posted their work in the Calling all Astrophotographers, all skill levels. Post your work ?
So photos don't turn up everywhere?
I know it's an old thread so maybe it's time for a 2017 version?

a reply to: eriktheawful

and to: intergalactic fire

and to: ThePeaceMaker

Those shots are beautiful, just amazing. I spend a lot of time falling over backwards looking at the night stars, but I've never tried taking photos of them. The results are well worth it though, as you've all demonstrated.

a reply to: intergalactic fire

It's F 8.0 to 32.0

The other thread is old, but the only reason we'd stop it and make a new one would be if it gets to 400 pages long.

It would be better for people to post the pictures they'd like to show case and/or brag about.

This thread would be better for showing pictures and giving tips on how they did it, or posting pics and asking for help.

a reply to: eriktheawful

OK got it, sounds about right
Still a long way to go

So that f8 with x2 converter wont it turn into an f16?
That would be hard to use no?

a reply to: intergalactic fire

More than likely, but I like a challenge.

If this were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Basically what I have done is attached a telescope to the camera.

Of course the f number with camera lenses are not the same as with telescopes. They're still calculated the same in that:

N = f/D where f is the focal length and D is the diameter of that opening, but in telescopes we consider N to be the focal ratio.

How good will it be? Won't know until I try it out. The higher the magnification, the lower the level of light will be. Which is why when you look at something with a 25mm eyepiece on the telescope it's bright, and a 9mm will zoom in on it, but it will look much dimmer to your eyes.

My first subject for this lens will be something easy: The Moon. It's very bright, fractions of a second shutter speed and I don't need a tracking mount with that, unless I'm trying to do video with it.

Then I'll move on to something harder. Like Orion's Nebula or the Pleiades, but first I'll do it without the 2x converter, at 500mm.

I learned the hard way a long time ago about just buying a bunch of equipment and trying to go to town like a pro, when you've barely read page 1 of the manual, hehehehe.

Ok im giving up. I have a couple pictures I want to post but I haven't got a clue as to what I'm doing wrong.

I made my way to the upload page. I had cropped the pics in snapseed which saves as a .jpg but the uploader apparently doesn't recognize it as a image file because I'm getting an error message. I managed to get a couple non astrophotography pics to upload but they disappeared and are not showing up on the myATS page. I hit the icon with the downward pointing arrow and all I get is a submenu with 9 selections and no references to my missing uploads.

I have used the search function with conflicting results and the newbie info page got me to where I'm at. Can someone point me in the right direction?