Lens Recommendation Astro and Macro

Aloicious · Apr 4, 2013

the new 35 1.4 is supposed to be the bee's knees. I think it'd be worth saving up for it.

bc_steve · Apr 5, 2013

Keep in mind Aloicious is shooting with an FX body while yours is DX, so any focal length will be 1.5x longer for you.

pgriz · Apr 5, 2013

There's a new tool in the astrophoto market that is apparently pretty good for camera-only shots: iOptron

I intend to get one towards summer, when I'll a bit more time to stay up late and do photography at night.

bc_steve · Apr 5, 2013

pgriz said:
There's a new tool in the astrophoto market that is apparently pretty good for camera-only shots: iOptron

I intend to get one towards summer, when I'll a bit more time to stay up late and do photography at night.

Only problem with summer is that you have to stay up even later

At least you don't freeze though.

I am very curious about that tool, please tell us all about it once you have a chance to try it!

pgriz · Apr 5, 2013

bc_steve said:
pgriz said:

There's a new tool in the astrophoto market that is apparently pretty good for camera-only shots: iOptron

I intend to get one towards summer, when I'll a bit more time to stay up late and do photography at night.

Click to expand...

Only problem with summer is that you have to stay up even later At least you don't freeze though.

I am very curious about that tool, please tell us all about it once you have a chance to try it!

The reviews in Sky and Telescope were pretty gushy about it. The way the polar alignment is done is pretty neat, and I am thinking that the best way to get images with that device, even with good tracking, is to take a set of individual shots (each about 2-5 minutes long) which would help minimize any tracking errors and reduce the sky fog, and then stack them with something like Registacker. But like I noted, it'll be a summer project. The other thing that has be cranked a bit, is that I found a really dark area about 2 hours drive from where I live which looks pretty promising in terms of sky darkness. The plus of the Skytracker, is that you don't have to haul a lot of gear, if you already have a study camera tripod and the camera gear.