Recent content by TCampbell

Lighting is a big deal. You'll likely need more than one lens. But for featuring a plate, my preference is for focal lengths slightly on the long side. Here's a sample shot (quite a few years ago) using my 100mm f/2.8L macro on a 5D 2. Sauteed Lake Perch by Tim Campbell, on Flickr I'm...

Hi Ron The trick with the reflectors (newtonian reflectors) is that every scope has a "focal length" ... the distance from where they start focusing light... to the point where the light comes to sharp focus. Suppose you have a generic telescope and suppose it's a refractor (not a...

The ISO setting on a film camera just changes the values that the light meter reports. On a film camera it's often referred to as "ASA" (instead of ISO) and just occasionally as "DIN". It's the same very general idea though ... but there are some real differences between digital sensors vs...

Is this an AE-1 ... or an AE-1 program (the diagram above is NOT a Canon AE-1 ... that's an AE-1 Program ... a variation on the AE-1). The battery powers the light meter and the electromagnetic release for the shutter. The shutter itself is basically a clockwork mechanism (the battery...

Yeah... so thanks for making several of us forum members feel really old. Your "grandad's" camera is a bit newer than what many of us had when starting out. The answer is: you don't get to see the photos ... so you're more disciplined about exposure rules and metering. "back in the day" it...

This really depends on your expectations. Most of the dramatic images you see of objects in deep space are shot with cameras taking several "long" exposures (long... typically being around 5 minutes ... sometimes longer, sometimes shorter). Clearly you wouldn't be able to hold a camera still...

I just occasionally shoot the moon ... but using a telescope. But prefer a non-full moon because the shadows created by the sun illuminating the moon from the side give the moon more of a 3D texture. Regardless of full vs. partial phase ... the exposure of the illuminated side will be the...

I can take you through some math regarding shutter speed. What you really want to know is how far the moon will travel on your camera sensor -- in pixels -- during the exposure. The Earth spins at roughly 15 arc-seconds per second (15.041). But since the Moon is orbiting the Earth, and in the...

That's normal for planets. The issue with plans is that they have a very small angular size. The moon, for example, is roughly 30 arc-minutes from edge to edge. Jupiter, on the other hand, is a mere 44 arc-minutes edge to edge (and that's only because we are roughly a month after 'opposition'...

Go for even shorter exposures. You should be able to see the cloud belts. I went out to image Jupiter last Tuesday ... but the sky wasn't having it (jet-stream directly overhead) -- all the stars were twinkling hard. I'll have to re-try if and when it ever stops raining and being overcast...

PhotoPills is a good phone app for planning composition of Milky Way shots (it has augmented reality so it shows you the image of your scene ... but overlays where the Milky Way would appear on date/time you pick. There's also Sky Safari (my favorite for all-around astronomy stuff). On iOS Sky...

There may be some aspects you are missing out on. I'm guessing those photographers you see may be using a higher f-stop which requires a longer exposure duration (too long for a hand-held shot). Assuming the botanical garden example... camera is probably reasonably close to the bloom...

The plate-solving software is something you can download -or- they have an online website where you can just upload the file, wait a few minutes while the server analyzes the stars, and then download the results. This page will give you those choices: Astrometry.net The other plate-solving...

The bright star in the middle of your field of view is Vega. I can see the constellation Lyra in the image. Here is the plate-solve for your image (this is your image ... but the plate-solving software annotated it): Here's a sky section below and I've put an orange box to approximate the...

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