Has anybody converted a point and shoot digicamera to a prime focus camera?
It seems to me that a cheap second hand camera of about 4 Mp could have the lens removed and then have a homemade adaptor made to fit it to the focuser. A 'rough enough' adaptor could even be made from say PVC tube, etc, and glued onto the camera.
This would be a cheap way of ending up with the equivalent of an expensive DSLR camera.
There must be one that is easy to convert, has anybody found it?
Could be done, but why? Most of the point and shoot have a limited exposure range say 1/125 to 1/60 sec so would limit objects to planets/ moon. The webcam would be a better solution, as you can collect multiple frames and add them. The webcam CCD size for planets is OK.
For DSO's you need exposures in the high seconds if not minutes on as large a CCD as you get get.
What are the requirements for a good Astronomy camera?
For example
1. exposure say 15+ Bulb mode 30secs..,
2. Minimum MP's required >4
3. ISO speeds required
4. What else..
Can the experts fill in the gaps.
Using this perhaps one can locate an older Digtal Camera SLR or SLR Like or simple point and shoot that has similar features. I would not think cameras are specifcaly made for Astronomy as such but perhaps some have the required features.
Ooops I forgot to add that I was mainly interested in using it for the moon.
It could be triggered manually or by bringing out the wires from the trigger button to a timer that could trigger it every second or so. A slow enough rate for it to write the pictures to the SD card or whatever, some simple ones can't repeat at a fast rate.
The idea was just that it could be say only $100 or less instead of $400? $800? etc.
It would also be self contained, not needing a laptop outside with it.
It would also produce a higher resolution image than a webcam, you can't blow up a 640x480 image large enough to hang on the wall but a 4Mpxl can be stretched reasonably large.
It was just a thought and I wondered if anybody had done it, that's all.
I've got some pretty nice looking photos of the moon just hand holding my canon ixus and clicking into the eyepiece Next time there is more moon around I'm going to try to borrow a tripod.
Next time there is more moon around I'm going to try to borrow a tripod.
