Quote:
Originally Posted by [1ponders]
What sort of focal length are you looking to use for your images? If you don't want star trails then you need a fairly short focal length when operating from a fixed tripod. A 50mm lens will give you about 14 sec of exposure before trailing, a 24mm nearly 30 sec. A 300mm lens will only give you around 2 sec. After these times your stars will start to trail and elongate.
You will also need a quick lens to be able to capture as many stars as possible in that short time, f1.8 - f2.8 would be good to start with.
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well, all we have with the D80 is an 18-200mm (f/3.5-5.6) telephoto lens we bought as an addition to the body, so wide field shots would be possible (although the lens is not as fast as may be liked) without guidance. Shots of the moon may also be good, even zooming in, although perhaps during the eclipse it may not be ideal.
those comments assume I make the correct judgements from your comments.
if so, then again, a tripod seems the way to go.
i can always see what is available in the secondhand market, although I would need to be careful when purchasing n older fixed length lens as I believe i may need to multiply the focal length by about 1.5 (hence a 35mm fast lens would be ideal). note that I am not completely up on the whole photography/lens thing yet.
my wife is the photographer in the family.
thanks for your advice,
DJDD