Looking for advice - Night photography camera/lens

WanderlustCouple

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TLDR; looking for advice for a good mirrorless camera for general photography with the first primary use being for astrography.

I’m brand new to the forum and looking for some advice. My wife and I are in the military and love traveling; we usually take a two week trip annually to a new country or two.
Thus far our cell phones have sufficed - I say that mainly because we haven’t brought a camera with us, despite my wife having an older one with some lenses.

I’m deployed right now but I go home in April and in June we are going to Chile, and for some reason I am obsessed with the idea of taking some incredible pictures of the stars when we visit the atacama desert.

My wife does have an older camera with some lenses (I’ll find out which ones), but I’m looking for advice on what camera and lens you recommend to capture that incredible picture of the stars that’s worth blowing up and framing.

We tend to travel relatively light so based on some research I believe mirrorless would be preferred, plus I like the idea of seeing what the picture will actually look like as we take it.

We are not professional stargazers so I’d want the camera to serve us well for other pictures as well - the majority of which are landscapes, castles, monuments, Great Wall of China etc etc..
I’m not worried about macro photography, nor do we usually take pictures of moving objects etc.

I’m not opposed to just getting a camera and one lens to focus on daytime pictures of the desert and the nighttime stars and then purchasing another lens next year etc.

I know this hobby gets expensive quickly, and I’m not opposed to used equipment from a reputable seller, but where should I start? What setup would you recommend?

Thank you,
~Pat

Oh, and I’ll gladly take any suggestions for posts or threads to read with tips on how to take the pictures we want.
 
Hi Pat, Welcome along, I got into Astrophotography a couple of years back, and has a Canon EOS 7D and a 70-200mm lens, that got me started but then you have to have a mount that tracks the earths movement, and the costs start to rise immediately, then the Lenses ( IN Uk ) Needed heaters as its always when its winter here that you get the clearer nights, I would take time looking at a Mount, Tripod etc and other equipment as the camera and lens relly don’t have to be top notch
 
You may want to consider getting two cameras. A general purpose one and one for astrophotography. Astrophotographers remove the IR filter in DLSRs (over the sensor) which blocks a large portion of nebula emissions. It is probably best to buy an old modified DSLR or better yet buy an astro camera. Astro cameras can be as cheap as $150 for an ASI224. Try the Cloudy Night site for advice and their used for sale forum. Also, astro cameras are subject to a lot of dew throughout the night. Not something you want on your new mirrorless camera.
 
I use my daytime gear I have for deep sky astrophotography.

Two main differences with astro vs daytime photography is that longer exposures are the norm for astro so a basic tracker will make your life much easier however if you shoot wide enough you can get some great sky/milky way images without one. The second one is that faster lenses (lower F#) makes a lot more of a difference.

I second the suggestion to get onto an astro specific forum/FB group etc. to get better answers from people that are shooting the same style of astrophotography to what you want. There are very different requirements for "Deep sky astro" vs "wide field astro" vs "planetary" and each of these groups will tell you to use different gear.
 
Hi Pat, Welcome along, I got into Astrophotography a couple of years back, and has a Canon EOS 7D and a 70-200mm lens, that got me started but then you have to have a mount that tracks the earths movement, and the costs start to rise immediately, then the Lenses ( IN Uk ) Needed heaters as its always when its winter here that you get the clearer nights, I would take time looking at a Mount, Tripod etc and other equipment as the camera and lens relly don’t have to be top notch

Thank you. I’m not sure I’ll be doing the kind of photography that would warrant/necessitate a tracker, but I’ll do a little more research. Thanks for the suggestions.
 
You may want to consider getting two cameras. A general purpose one and one for astrophotography. Astrophotographers remove the IR filter in DLSRs (over the sensor) which blocks a large portion of nebula emissions. It is probably best to buy an old modified DSLR or better yet buy an astro camera. Astro cameras can be as cheap as $150 for an ASI224. Try the Cloudy Night site for advice and their used for sale forum. Also, astro cameras are subject to a lot of dew throughout the night. Not something you want on your new mirrorless camera.

I appreciate the suggestions! Two cameras might be an option; astrophotography will probably not be a super frequent requirement.
I’ll take a look at cloudy night. Thanks again.
 
I use my daytime gear I have for deep sky astrophotography.

Two main differences with astro vs daytime photography is that longer exposures are the norm for astro so a basic tracker will make your life much easier however if you shoot wide enough you can get some great sky/milky way images without one. The second one is that faster lenses (lower F#) makes a lot more of a difference.

I second the suggestion to get onto an astro specific forum/FB group etc. to get better answers from people that are shooting the same style of astrophotography to what you want. There are very different requirements for "Deep sky astro" vs "wide field astro" vs "planetary" and each of these groups will tell you to use different gear.

Perfect. I think in my mind I’m more focused on wide field Astro, but I’ll dig into it more.

Definitely understand the need for a faster lens. Thanks for the suggestions.

Pat
 
Even with wide field Astro any exposure over 8 seconds or so will blur the stars. The quality of your pics will be greatly improved with a tracking mount.
 
Perfect. I think in my mind I’m more focused on wide field Astro, but I’ll dig into it more.

Definitely understand the need for a faster lens. Thanks for the suggestions.

Pat
Wide field simplifies things. There are many guided mounts. I think the easiest and cheapest is to buy a Celestron SLT/GT telescope, just use the mount with your camera. shopgoodwill dot com has these for peanuts all the time ($50). Select "seller location" so you can pick it up at a location near you and not pay shipping). Really, Cloudynights is probably the best place for up to date information on this. Its been a while for me.

Here is an SLT/GT example. This fellow built an adjustable wedge to use equatorial mode, but much easier to not use a wedge and use AZ mode and just attaching camera to the mount.
 

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