Planning my first steps into a massive new world

[Wraith6761]

So I'm seriously considering getting into astrophotography, specifically just getting nighttime shots of the milky way or other great nighttime skyscapes (is that even a word?), and eventually look into mounting the camera to a telescope for some good shots of planets (maybe even some deep space stuff like the orion or horsehead nebula, but that's a long ways down the road). I found out the hard way that my current trusty camera (Nikon S8100 point and shoot) just doesn't have the capacity for capturing those kinds of shots (no matter how much post-processing I put into it, they just don't turn out). I guess it's due to me not being able to keep the shutter open long enough to get enough light onto the sensor? (I'm a babe in the woods with this stuff, but that's the best my IT background can lead me to suspect) If that's the case, then I'd need something with manual shutter control, which I'm assuming leaves me looking at getting a DSLR, correct? That raises two main issues in my mind:

My first issue is, I'm almost always backpacking in the mountains or the backwoods when I'm actually getting these amazing views. I'm generally doing about 10-15 miles a day, so I don't really want something that's going to add 10 pounds to my pack. Also, I'm a bit worried about how fragile these cameras might be. My Nikon isn't as rugged as a GoPro, but with a very small belt case it's survived quite a few miles on the trail and is no worse for the wear. With my Nikon, it's all one piece...from what I understand of DSLRs, it's multiple pieces. How many pieces would I likely end up with? Just a camera, a lens, and a tripod? Multiple lenses and filters? And are these pieces generally rugged enough to survive in the woods without 5 pounds of padding wrapped around each one? Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty gentle with my gear, but when something costs this much I start getting nervous about how much it can take.

My second issue is probably a common one: price. These cameras, even the "entry-level," are expensive (at least to me). If possible I'd like to try to keep the cost under $750 (though lower would be better). I already have a pretty solid tripod, so that should save me a bit of money there, but I'm guessing I'd have to buy the camera body and a wide angle lens at least...is that a possibility within that budget, or should this just go onto the back burner until I can save up more for it?

I was looking at the Canon SL1, or possibly the T5 or T5i models on Best Buy and Amazon, and they both seem to be having some bundle deals coming up. Would one of these cameras work, and if so would any one of them stand out as the best for my particular situation?

Or is there a way to get my current Nikon to work for this situation, and thus save myself a lot of money?

 

[SpartanGTR]

So I'm seriously considering getting into astrophotography, specifically just getting nighttime shots of the milky way or other great nighttime skyscapes (is that even a word?), and eventually look into mounting the camera to a telescope for some good shots of planets (maybe even some deep space stuff like the orion or horsehead nebula, but that's a long ways down the road). I found out the hard way that my current trusty camera (Nikon S8100 point and shoot) just doesn't have the capacity for capturing those kinds of shots (no matter how much post-processing I put into it, they just don't turn out). I guess it's due to me not being able to keep the shutter open long enough to get enough light onto the sensor? (I'm a babe in the woods with this stuff, but that's the best my IT background can lead me to suspect) If that's the case, then I'd need something with manual shutter control, which I'm assuming leaves me looking at getting a DSLR, correct? That raises two main issues in my mind:

My first issue is, I'm almost always backpacking in the mountains or the backwoods when I'm actually getting these amazing views. I'm generally doing about 10-15 miles a day, so I don't really want something that's going to add 10 pounds to my pack. Also, I'm a bit worried about how fragile these cameras might be. My Nikon isn't as rugged as a GoPro, but with a very small belt case it's survived quite a few miles on the trail and is no worse for the wear. With my Nikon, it's all one piece...from what I understand of DSLRs, it's multiple pieces. How many pieces would I likely end up with? Just a camera, a lens, and a tripod? Multiple lenses and filters? And are these pieces generally rugged enough to survive in the woods without 5 pounds of padding wrapped around each one? Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty gentle with my gear, but when something costs this much I start getting nervous about how much it can take.

My second issue is probably a common one: price. These cameras, even the "entry-level," are expensive (at least to me). If possible I'd like to try to keep the cost under $750 (though lower would be better). I already have a pretty solid tripod, so that should save me a bit of money there, but I'm guessing I'd have to buy the camera body and a wide angle lens at least...is that a possibility within that budget, or should this just go onto the back burner until I can save up more for it?

I was looking at the Canon SL1, or possibly the T5 or T5i models on Best Buy and Amazon, and they both seem to be having some bundle deals coming up. Would one of these cameras work, and if so would any one of them stand out as the best for my particular situation?

Or is there a way to get my current Nikon to work for this situation, and thus save myself a lot of money?

What kind of budget are you looking at if you buy a new camera? I had an SL1 for a while and it's pretty small but since it's still an EOS mount the lenses can be very large. Personally, i'd recommend a mirrorless over an SLR if portability is your key concern. Although with the holidays coming up you should be able to find some killer deals on an SL1 bundle that has the kit zoom AND the 55-250mm telephoto for pretty cheap. The body and those 2 lenses will easily fit into a small camera bag and won't weigh much(I had both).

 

[TCampbell]

You may be thinking of a "star lapse" image. These are the images in which the camera tracks the sky as it moves (more accurately ... counter-rotates to compensate for Earth's rotation.)

The basic old-school way of doing this was by building something called a "barn door tracker". Two pieces of wood with a hinge at one end, and a threaded bolt at the other end. The position of the bolt wasn't random... you calculated the position using a bit of trigonometry and found a bolt with the correct number of threads per inch such that you would give this thing a 1/4 turn once every few seconds and you'd sit their with a watch (something with a second hand) so that it keeps your camera reasonably on-track for a very wide-angle image (minor amounts of tracking error don't show up on very wide-angle images. But they DO show up on narrow angle of view images.)

The modern way is to use a tracking mount. Piggy backing a camera onto an equatorial mount telescope (you can't use an alt/az mount even if it's computerized/motorized and tracking because alt/az tracking creates "field rotation" problems that blur the image) also works.

There is:

• Losmandy StarLapse
• AstroTrac
• Vixen Polarie
• iOptron Star Tracker

The Losmandy is the top end (it's actually the RA axis head from a Losmandy G8 telescope mount so it's designed to handle heavier loads. Losmandy is known for making high-end telescope mounts designed for long exposure imaging.) I think AstroTrac will probably fall to the bottom of your list due to it's size (and it's quite expensive for what it is.) In the sub-$500 category there's the Vixen and iOptron offerings.

The tracking mount has to be oriented so that it's axis of rotation is parallel to the Earth's axis of rotation. Usually there's a small polar alignment scope (sometimes sold as an optional accessory) to help you get the tracker aligned to the north celestial pole. Losmandy doesn't include theirs and it's fairly expensive... but it's the best alignment scope I've seen on the market... by far!

With the mount aligned on a SOLID tripod, you do not have to point the camera at the north celestial pole... you can attach a ball-head and point the camera anywhere you'd like.

It REALLY helps if the load is balanced... and this is one of the areas where the Losmandy system has a big advantage. Their system includes an arm with a variable position rail so that once you mount and point the camera, you can loosen the rotation axis to see if the camera wants to flop in any particular direction... then move the camera along the rail to find a neutral balance location. When shooting very wide-angle shots this won't be a big deal. When shooting with longer, heavier lenses for narrower fields of view (e.g. trying to catch, say, the Orion Nebula with the Horsehead and Flame in one shot) then the tracking problems caused by balance issues will drive you nuts.

You will need a camera that can be manually focused. Auto-focus won't work on stars... they're too small and the camera won't lock on to them. You'll need to go into 'live view' mode, magnify the view on the back-screen (zoom in as much as possible) and focus carefully on any bright star (it doesn't even have to be the area of the sky you plan to image... once you have focused for any object in the night sky, you have focused for EVERY object in the night sky. You can reposition your camera after locking focus on a bright star.

Start with very wide angle (and preferably low focal ratio) lenses. For a DSLR camera, these are lenses that offer something in the 10-20mm range. Work your way up to longer focal lengths as you get used to how these systems work.

Any camera can shoot star fields, the milky way, galaxies like the Andromeda galaxy, etc. It's when you try to shoot images that reveal deep-space nebulae that you'll notice a big difference in the cameras (e.g. the Rosette Nebula, Orion Nebula, Horsehead, etc.) These nebulae glow rich with light in the Hydrogen alpha (Ha) band. That's 656nm ... human vision is everything from roughly 400nm (violet) to 700nm (red). Ha light shows up as a fire-engine-red color. The "problem" is that normal cameras are designed to mimic human vision and our human eyes are very sensitive to the middle of the visible spectrum... much less sensitive as you approach the edges of the spectrum. The filter in normal cameras starts trimming light at around 500nm and continues to become more aggressive ... ramping up how much light it blocks until it reaches 700nm at which point it's blocking everything. But at 656nm the camera is blocking about 80% of the light. This means you end up needing to take exposures that are 5 times longer to compensate for the loss of light caused by that filter.

To get around the problem, astro-imagers like to use cameras that have had their blocking filters removed and replaced with filters more ideal to astro-imaging. We still want to block the IR (because it focuses at a different distance than other wavelengths... getting rid of IR improves overall focus) but we want a filter that doesn't block anything in visible spectrum and then abruptly starts blocking aggressively at the end of the visible spectrum (a very quick cut off rather than a slow ramping cut off.)

Canon's 60Da is pre-modified (It's a 60D camera with a different filter that doesn't block light in the visible spectrum to match the human eye's expectation.) Due to the limited market for such a camera, there's a price premium. Many other cameras can be modified but doing so with a "new" camera will, of course, void the warranty. I would start with a normal DSLR (not modified). If the deep-sky imaging bug bites you... then you may want to try a modified camera. A lot of folks buy a used camera to do the modification.

One last thing. Many of the best images aren't just a single image. Astro imagers take lots of images and then stack them using special software designed to process astro-images. Deep-Sky Stacker is popular (and I think that one is free). I use PixInsight (not free). Long deep-sky exposures tend to get a lot of "noise" in the image. The sensors get hot... hot sensors generate even more noise (there's a relationship between physical temperature sensor and noise.... dedicated imaging cameras often have "cooled" sensors.) By "stacking" the images the computer can really knock back the noise and create a gorgeous smooth image. Learning the basics isn't so difficult, but every image needs to be processed a bit differently and this skill has a bit of a learning curve.

 

[dennybeall]

I remember a friend, Bob Price, from many years ago and he was into astronomy. To get a "SOLID" mount he poured 4 yards of concrete and built a metal shed on it - put telescope in shed and would wait for the coldest weather and take the top off the shed and use his 12" scope. NO heat of any kind allowed in the vicinity.
Serious astro-photography takes large amounts of money and time to do well. You may want to do more research........

 

[TCampbell]

I remember a friend, Bob Price, from many years ago and he was into astronomy. To get a "SOLID" mount he poured 4 yards of concrete and built a metal shed on it - put telescope in shed and would wait for the coldest weather and take the top off the shed and use his 12" scope. NO heat of any kind allowed in the vicinity.
Serious astro-photography takes large amounts of money and time to do well. You may want to do more research........

And this is typical. I don't own my own observatory (my lot is too small and it's an older neighborhood with very tall trees so I have no unobstructed views in any direction other than straight up). But I do have several friends with observatories and I maintain and operate an observatory for a local school district. None of them are heated (though often we have a small space heater but those are ONLY used when we are in the observatory to perform maintenance... never when the shutter on the dome is open and the telescope is in use.

Many observatories isolate the floor you walk on from the telescope foundation so that the scope can't vibrate when people are walking. The floor is basically a large donut shape with a hole in the middle and the telescope pier in the center and the floor doesn't touch the telescope pier.

 

[Ido]

To get a lot of the Milky Way in one shot, you need a wide-angle lens. And to avoid their blurring/streaking, you need to restrain the shutter speed to the 500 rule of thumb - exposure time should not exceed 500/(focal length)*(crop factor). To do that, you'll need quite a wide aperture, and a camera that's capable enough in low light. That usually isn't cheap.

One lens that comes to mind is the Rokinon 12mm f/2 for mirrorless system cameras with APS-C or smaller sensors.12mm gives an ultra-wide field of view when coupled with an APS-C sensor, and f/2 is excellent for this type of photography. It's also a fully manual lens, meaning no autofocus or automatic control over aperture, which is actually a good thing for night-sky photography. At $320, it's basically dirt-cheap for what it offers, and it's available in pretty much all mirrorless systems' mounts - most notable for your needs are Fujifilm X and Sony E.

There are several Sony E-mount cameras that fit within your budget while still leaving room for the Rokinon lens. One of those is the Alpha a5100, which costs just $348 body-only or $498 with the kit lens, if you also want a zoom lens with autofocus to shoot different things. Add $100 and you get the a6000, which adds an EVF, beefier grip and flash, but they both have the exact same sensor, so image quality should be identical.