Low Light but super distance test d600/d7000. Yeah, that speck is Saturn

[astroNikon]

So I've been running a few tests lately of my d7000 vs d600

The Moon. This is easy. On the 2000mm The d600 wins hands down. Forget about the ISO and stuff initially as the FF makes the Moon one big object that does not require any cropping what-so-ever. So that makes me happy. Plus better ISO control, etc

Now on to Saturn. This on my telescope (which is not an expensive one by far) with no tracking turned on. No magnification. Just using it as a big lens. Now Saturn moves *fast* across the sky. This is a 30 second uncropped exposure of it:


Thus shutter speed is still an issue. Thus ISO and low light is too.

Here is an uncropped of the d600. Do you see it? It's a little spec there


You have to heavily crop it, like this:

And the Final
ISO 2000 // 1/40 sec


and the d7000
- total image

Cropped image
ISO 2000 1/50 shutter


I have more tests but these came out best. It's a fast thing moving across the sky and getting focus .. I forgot how hard it is. My spotter scope is close to dead on which makes it easier. As what you see through the scope eyepiece is *not* what you get through the camera, in the terms of focusing. Through the eyepiece you can focus on it and it's nice (magnification eyepieces makes it large and sharp). But through the camera before refocusing it looks like this .. that circular thing in the lower right. So the camera then becomes your only visual aid other than the spotting scope which is your basic crosshair type.


Next time I'll add magnification to the test. And this provides a bit more balance to the scope. In the above tests I used the camera in the back port, which does not use the mirror. Now for magnification I'll be using the top port which does use the mirror (and also more pieces of glass in the magnification device) and may decrease the sharpness.

I tried to use my iPhone through the eyepiece .. that didn't work at all.

 

[Tinderbox (UK)]

I heard that the D7000 does something to the black level, people say it has an ISO less sensor and that it is not good for astronomical photography because of this, i don't know the specifics.

John.

 

[scythefwd]

And here I am impressed that you have pics of stuff 1/2 way across our solar system to the point its actully recognizable

 

[pgriz]

I'm impressed. Seriously.

 

[astroNikon]

I heard that the D7000 does something to the black level, people say it has an ISO less sensor and that it is not good for astronomical photography because of this, i don't know the specifics.

John.

I read that stuff before, but I'm not sure exactly what it is.

When I crank up the ISO too much on the d7000 the photo turns into complete white & red noise.
So .. I'm not sure how that ranks on the ISO less thing

Here's d7000 ISO 4000 - higher than this it just went to white and red speckles

 

[astroNikon]

Ooh I forgot. at 10:28 last night I saw a falling star directly south. Pretty neat. It lasted about 4 seconds.
I wish I had a camera in my hands. Actually that wasn't my wish.

The biggest problem I had last night was there was a baseball game right next to me and they had all the field lights on. So alot of environmental noise. plus all the airplanes flying by, they were circling around to land at Detroit Metro.

 

[astroNikon]

And here I am impressed that you have pics of stuff 1/2 way across our solar system to the point its actully recognizable

I'm impressed. Seriously.

Thanks
It's alot of fun. I have a small scope too. The larger ones give better images.
Hopefully tonight I'll fiddle with the scope magnification .. it gets a bit harder.

On film this basically was useless. So my initial forays into astro stuff with film came up with few usable photos ... so I never did much. With digital .. now one could experiment and see the result immediately. Totally love it.

 

[Msteelio91]

Very cool man!!

 

[astroNikon]

Here's some old pictures of Jupiter for you guys and multiple moons

 

[chuasam]

You make me want to get a Telescope too

 

[Raj_55555]

Wow!! How do you fit a telescope to your camera again?
I remember seeing this Fillipino (I think) Scientist on facebook, who took a picture of the Orion nebula from his home. As far as I could tell it was legit, but no clue how one can take these shots...Inspiring really!

 

[ruifo]

Wow!! How do you fit a telescope to your camera again?
I remember seeing this Fillipino (I think) Scientist on facebook, who took a picture of the Orion nebula from his home. As far as I could tell it was legit, but no clue how one can take these shots...Inspiring really!

There are several adapters that allow that. You just need to get the right one for you.

AstroNikon: very good work indeed. this week I was shooting the Milky Way from SW Michigan and it was pretty fun.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruimc/14936898795/in/photostream

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruimc/14750296858/in/photostream/

 

[chuasam]

Have you read this yet?
http://petapixel.com/2014/07/30/sony-a7s-astrophotography-review/


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[unpopular]

So I've been running a few tests lately of my d7000 vs d600

The Moon. This is easy. On the 2000mm The d600 wins hands down. Forget about the ISO and stuff initially as the FF makes the Moon one big object that does not require any cropping what-so-ever. So that makes me happy. Plus better ISO control, etc

This doesn't quite make sense, or I am having a monster brain fart. Shouldn't the moon on the APS-C sensor consumer more percentage of the sensor at any given magnification?

 

[astroNikon]

So I've been running a few tests lately of my d7000 vs d600

The Moon. This is easy. On the 2000mm The d600 wins hands down. Forget about the ISO and stuff initially as the FF makes the Moon one big object that does not require any cropping what-so-ever. So that makes me happy. Plus better ISO control, etc

This doesn't quite make sense, or I am having a monster brain fart. Shouldn't the moon on the APS-C sensor consumer more percentage of the sensor at any given magnification?

You'd have to see it.
It is consuming more percentage of the sensor .. like 100% of it.

at 2,000mm the moon is consuming nearly the entire top to bottom of the FF sensor (39.5 x 24) - probably using 22mm of the sensor height. (not width)

Thus the crop sensor is only getting part of the moon, not the entire moon.

The d7000 crop sensor is 23.6 x 15.6mm tall, thus is it not getting about 7mm of the moon's height, and effectively chopping it.
On my smaller etx90 telescope that I had, the d7000 was a good match for the moon without cropping.


in other words,
at 2,000mm the moon fill up the entire image circle.
A crop camera, only captures part of that image circle, and thus only part of the moon

at 900mm the moon fills up part of the image circle
and a crop camera would then have the moon as a larger image of the smaller sensor.

the telescope, is essentially the lens in this scenario as the camera is directly attached to it.