Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
Thank you Jon.
I sincerely hope that folk realise if an old uneducated mug like me who is near cripple can manage to get something happening that they can do it also.
The great irony is the $200 nikon lens delivers extremely , for me, satifying results.
And so many people can get involved with a very small investement.
And I post so folk realise how well off they really are.
Alex
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Alex, a stroke four years ago left me crippled. Can't use my good gear anymore so forced to make do with what I can. Just as well I'm not lazy like most folks and pushing what I have to its limits is in my nature already. I find it disheartening to see so many people think throwing money at hte problem is the solution, dont listen to advice and realise they are out of their depth with a new set of problems, when all they need was patience and to think before acting.
I'd suggest reformatting your laptop and setting it up with ONLY what you need for control and capture. Nothing else. Disable wifi too (power drain) and keep if offline, if it works you dont need it to be online ever and it wont disrupt a capture session with self updating. Set power options to turn off the screen as quick as possible too and turn off hibernation or drive sleep options too. have a good capacity external drive (SSD preferred 1-2TB size) to record to and easy to plug into another machine. It should be fast enough unless you need to record very high speed, very rare. for deep space etc drive speed of little consequence. Then you just take the drive to another machine to transfer and process the data, letting you shut down the laptop to prolong its life and save it from getting filled and slowed with processing temp files, or processing interfering with a capture session.
I've switched to focusing on capture as my priority, I am very time poor and still have to work full time. But for me capturing the data is priority and I can use time later on another machine to process when available. I'm not contributing to discoveries so processing in a hurry is not important (I know its exciting to see if you got what you wanted and often do a quick processing to check especially if its a new target or gear). Like Mars approaching opposition at the moment, I've made changes and been out a bunch of times, gotten my best images of Mars to date which is great and still got data to process and each time I go out I don't feel pressured into capturing Saturn or Jupiter too since they are up there and I feel comfortable devoting extra time to testing capture settings to refine them. I often capture multiple times with slight adjustments so I can compare later if the results after processing are better or worse. I've also stopped worrying about what else is up while I'm there. I have my capture target in mind, planets are quick so once I do the one I was after I might go after another.
As for a $200 nikon lens, yes my nikon on a regular camera tripod (no tracking) is all I currently use for deep space objects. Not the ideal setup but certainly very doable for anyone with patience to learn and half a brain (thanks to my stroke I only have half a brain
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Good to see you havent thrown in the towel Alex as health interferes with life. Astronomy has much to offer at all levels and it may require you to shift areas of interest to suit your physical limitations, there are ways and means to maximise with your minimal capabilities and gear still. Its a problem solved by will power rather than cash as I'm sure you know.
steve