About equipment for beginners in astrophotography

[Astronomer007 (Enrique)]

Hello Everyone:

1.
I have a Nikon D300s, and I want to start in the fascinating world of astrophotography.

Could you suggest a basic equipment to start as soon as possible?

2.
To take astrophotography, with this type ok Nikon Camera, which ISO, speed and time, could I use?


Thank you very much

Enrique

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Basic tripod wide field shots are possible. Try your standard lens, ISO 400 - 1600, 10 - 30 seconds on "bulb" setting.

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

I agree with Kevin, that's an excellent place to start.

Depending on your lenses anywhere from 8 - 30 seconds, lens et to f/4.0 should get you some results.

Although it's not entirely needed what will make life sooo much easier is a remote shutter cord and a cheap tripod.
You can set your camera on delay to take the picture a few seconds after you have pressed the shutter if you like, it will get you started anyway until you can get a remote shutter but it is important to eliminate any type of shake in the image.

[Danny_86 (Danny)]

Hey Enrique, yeah starting off as basic as setting your camera on a tripod with a remote shutter release is a good way to start off. The best way to understand how to work out the shutter speed is to divide 600 by the focal length using, for example 600/50mm = 12 seconds. But as you have the d300 you will also have to consider it is 1.5 crop sensor which would actually be 8 seconds.

The best way to get the light into the camera is open up your aperture as wide as possible preferably f/2.8 or less. The ISO can range normally between 1600 to 6400 but depending how your camera manages with ISO but it is worth having it high & cleaning it up in Photoshop, by using dark & bias frames.

There are also cheap other ways to get started in astrophotography, you can also buy a Vixen Polarie or a iOptron Skytracker which cost about $600. Both of these are trackers & both easy to setup by aligning up with the celestial pole. Then from there the you can get a EQ6 with a ED80, but with that you need your powertank, autoguider & all you accessories so that gets quiet expensive over $3000.

I hope this helps

[Meru (Michael)]

Hey Enrique,

Welcome to IIS Using a DSLR is the best way to start this hobby, that's how I started out! The D300s is a good camera as well, you should get some nice images from there. To answer your points (Mostly re-iteration of the replies above):

1. Basic equipment would be a tripod, and that's it. If you were using a wide angle lens (Wider than 35mm for full frame, or ~22mm for the DX sensors i.e. what the D300s has), then you would start to notice the stars streaking around the 10-15sec shutter speed mark. If you were using a longer focal length lens, like a 50mm, then this would be in the order of a few seconds. That's why alot of us eventually use some sort of star-tracking mount, whether it be a simple Vixen Polaris or a fully-fledged HEQ5 mount as Danny suggested.

Also Jarrod has made an excellent point, a remote shutter release cable makes life SO much better. I bought one from ebay for my D800, where you can fully program shutter speeds and number of images etc. I could have bought a genuine nikon model but that would have costed a fortune.

2. With the settings, the most important point is your location - dark skies make a HUGE difference to how good your image turns out. A simple drive 30min away from your town will go a long way. After that, you have to experiment with which combination of ISO, shutter and aperature gives you the best result. High ISO will give you noise, Long shutter will give you streaking/trailing stars and a large aperature (>f/4) will distort the stars on the edge of the image.

Start off with ISO 3200, 10sec and f/3.5 with the widest lens you have, and go from there. Have a look in our nightscape gallery section (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/f...splay.php?f=49), lots and lots of images with DSLRs and the settings then used.

Just remember, the more you image, the more experience and better your photos! And share them with us in our beginners gallery section (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/f...splay.php?f=46), lots of constructive feedback will be given!