Here are some afocal shots of Jupiter taken through the 46 cm reflector at the TwinStar Observatory near Stanthorpe last Saturday night. Taken with a hand-held Pentax K100D. Some adjustments made on PS7. I'm quite pleased with the results. Hope you like then!
There's an attachment you can get which will allow you to take afocal shots without ever having to steady the camera with your hands. All you have to do is set up the camera and set the timer to go off when you want it to. It's from Orion....called the SteadyPix Camera Mount. Costs about $60 from Bintel... https://www.bintelshop.com.au/welcome.htm
I bought myself an afocal camera mount but found it very hard to get the focal train lined up accurately.
Just when I thought I had it right, I had to change focus and the lens moved forward and stuffed it all up again.
Using a dob made it so much harder because you are always losing track of the planet, and with the camera latched to the scope, you can't check through the eyepiece to see if everythings lined up well.
After much frustration I gave up and went back to hand held.
But that said, lots of people have great success. IIS member "Chrisyo" is the undisputed King of Afocal imaging with his superb pictures of Saturn.
