Old fashioned deep sky photography

[Quark]

Hey guys,
Had a bit of a look through the deep sky imaging forum, couldn't help but notice how unrepresented imaging the old fashioned way appears to be, you know what I mean, hand guided on film.

Now dont go burning me at the stake, but all of my deep sky imaging over the years has been with a 50 year old Nicomat manual 35mm camera.

This camera is so heavy that if it were to drop on your foot it would brake bone.

These are some of my galaxy images that I did for a galaxy morphology project at Uni.

These are all hand guided 20 min exposures on Fujipress 800.
M 83,NGC 253, NGC 1291, NGC 1365 and NGC 4945. Taken at the prime focus of my 16" F4.5 Newt

Regards
Trevor

[Peter Ward]

.........And the links are where?

[Alchemy]

first ones i recall seeing......

Others have done but not put up as this. Interesting, makes life hard without flat fields, and hooray for autoguiding..... i think tornado(scott) still hand guides,

Aster and Mike (the strong variety ) would have a more experienced opinion on film, i did it waaay back but more tripod short exposure stuff, and star trails.

[strongmanmike]

Great stuff Trevor, these are pretty good images. Vignetting was quite expected in the good old days. When were these taken?

Her is some of my old film work, they are just scans of old and poorly stored prints I'm affraid

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/in_the_begining

Mike

[Robert_T]

I used to do prime focus film photography about 20 years ago using hypersensitised Tech Pan film which I imported from the states at great expense. used to process and print myself... I could never go back to film now, it takes full on commitment which I just don't have. the amount of times I bumped the scope two minutes from the end of what would have been a 60minute exposure...brrr, give's me the willies even thinking about film. reckon it was why I gave up astronomy for around 15 years (that and the kids:D)

[MrB]

Ahhhh, thats the stuff!
There's something about the way film astrophoto's look, kinda like the way old vinyl's sound.
Good stuff.

[AlexN]

i have a 25 yr old nikormat that weighs more than my 350D + 70-200 F/4L combined... Cant bring myself to get rid of it... too many fond memories.

[Quark]

Hi Mike,
All of the Galaxy images were taken back in 2004 for a galaxy morphology project for Uni, they are on FujiPress 800. I have run out of my stock of that film and my local supplier will only get it in if a buy a box of it.

I used to use Kodak Ektar 1000 and then Royal Gold 1000 but like all decent films they have been discontinued.

There is something about being up a ladder, drive corrector in one hand remote camera cable in the other. I used a countdown timer and often after about 20 minutes I would star wondering if I had pushed the start button hard enough to start the timer, if the shutter had already been open for 40 mins.

Got to love digital photography, stacking relatively short exposures. One day I will acquire a digital 35mm camera and get back into deep sky work.

Regards
Trevor

[Quark]

Hi Alex,
Yeh, got love the old Nikomat, if their is such a thing as a bullet proof camera that was it.

Not bad for use as a door stop either, have to be blowin a gale to move it.

Regards
Trevor