As I wrote in the previous entry, our attempt to take pictures of the moon last night was met with some thick fog. Tonight, however, the sky was very clear. So I set up the digital camera on a tripod in my driveway, set the camera to the maximum optical zoom (8x), and pointed it at the moon.
Using the automatic settings, here’s the result.
The cool thing about this picture is that by over-exposing the lit crescent part of the moon, the dark part of it becomes clearly visible. You can see a tad bit of detail there if you look closely. The drawback is, as you continue to expose the bright part, noise builds in the camera’s CCD chip, as you can see.
This next picture is much better. The shutter was open for 1/250th second at f/2.8. The detail really comes out. I’ve applied a slight unsharp mask to the picture, but nothing else has been enhanced.
That’s more like it. Again, it’s a simple point, zoom, and shoot with the camera mounted on a tripod.
Pretty cool.
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February 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 am
I just recently acquired a Canon EOS 30D and I’ve been thinking about trying to do some astrophotography myself. I’m terrified, though, that it’s gonna be a huge money-sink.
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:11 am
Hello Peter! I had no idea you were a reader. Thanks for commenting.
The camera you have would be prefect for prime focus astrophotography, which means you would attach the camera directly to the telescope, effectively using the telescope as the lens. So to start out, you already have a leg up compared to most digital astrophotographers (including me).
You’re correct that astrophotography, and amateur astronomy in general, is a huge money sink. You could easily spend thousands of dollars for the telescope alone and still need to purchase something to mount it on, eyepieces, dew heaters, accessories to attach the camera, etc.
I’ve been active in amateur astronomy for a little more than ten years now, so that gives me some experience to share with you. Just about everyone who really tries to get astrophotos has some degree of success. There are varying learning curves for different photographic methods, and different people are willing to put different levels of effort into it, but most people produce something.
Those who make the investment in equipment and time and then later abandon the hobby, and subsequently feel like they wasted money, “fail” (for lack of a better term) for simple reasons. They work 9-5 and can’t be out late. They can’t spend weekends camping because they have to watch the kids. They get frustrated by the weather and move to other interests. They have a difficult time making friends with others interested in the hobby and they get bored, or reach a point where they’re lost or unable to do more and nobody can give them a hand. You get the idea.
If I were you, I’d track down a local amateur astronomy group (You live in the NY area right? Surely there must be a dozen.) and find out where they’re meeting for the eclipse next Saturday. Show up early and bring your camera along. If the people there are anything like the people here, they’ll be very excited to show you what they have and tell you everything they know. Make a friend and ask if they’d like to take some eclipse pictures through their scope with your camera. There’s gotta be someone who’ll say yes. I know I would.
That’ll give you a feel for the process, and perhaps producing some great pictures of an event that’s very cool looking and simple to photograph will be a motivator to make an investment. Or maybe you’ll decide that you can’t commit to something like astrophotography because of your schedule or whatever. Or maybe you’ll become the popular new guy with the cool digital camera that everyone wants to be buddies with so they can have you e-mail them last night’s pictures to show their friends.
Give it a try next Saturday. The most you have to lose is a few hours.