Choices for getting started

[alexs]

I'm a photographer of many years and have been considering getting a scope for ages. Tonight I was blown away by actually seeing the moon through a telescope and have decided to finally make a purchase.

My wife and I are keen to use the scope to view planets, moon and galaxies but I also want to expand my photography to astrophotography.

I already use a 5dmkii and have a range of tripods, etc.

Budget for first telescope would be around $500AUD. What would be a good choice? Is it even enough to dabble in astrophotography or should we just stick to viewing with a budget like that?

Feedback would be greatly appreciated

[Atmos (Colin)]

Welcome to the money pit

With a budget like that I would say that you'd be best getting an 8" dob and a few eye pieces for your wife and yourself to view the skies.


It is not a good telescope for photography as it doesn't track the sky. Getting that setup will blow most of not all of your cash BUT I would suggest having a look at this for getting into astrophotography. You already have the camera, lens' and tripod.

In astrophotography your mount is pretty much your most important piece of equipment. You can get reasonable photos with a good mount and poor telescope but you can have a $5,000 telescope on a bad mount and never get a usable image.

[sil (Steve)]

You can do astrophotography with the gear you have right now. Its a steep learning curve and a lot more processing involved. As a photographer myself I found almost none of my skills were relevant to astrophotography. There are many limiting factors and when you break it all down you find you can counter most of them at the cost of something else. Do this for each step and you can find your practical limitations come down to magnitude limitations and the cost in time processing.

Yes, grab yourself a dobsonian telescope and give your eyes a treat but its not much use for astrophotography (a computerised EQ goto mount is what you need as a minimum (no telescope needed either, camera and lens is fine)).

[DarkKnight (Kev)]

Hi Alex,

I'm going down the same road as yourself. I had a play with the gear I have and got hooked. You can get some very acceptable results with your camera and various lens once you realise what effect the earths rotation will have on your results.

Have a play with a wide angle lens on the Milky Way. There is a rule of thumb called 'The 600 Rule' which determines the length of your exposure. You divide 600 by the focal length of your lens and that gives you the maximum exposure time before you get star trailing, ie your stars are no longer round. So if you have a 14mm lens, 600÷14=42secs max although I prefer to use 500 and then go a bit less.

Oh and you are probably going to have to travel to get away from the light pollution prevalent in cities. It gives a horrible yellow glow on the horizon.

There is a member on Ausphotography forum from Brisbane who gets great results with the tracker that atmos suggested coupled with a Canon 5d and a 70-200mm f2.8 lens. His most recent post here .... http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...n-and-Pleiades You would need a very stable tripod for this.

I initially looked at this set-up but in the interests of future proofing I've gone for a heavier motorised mount and tripod, the SkyWatcher HEQ5 Pro.

I've had to give myself a reality check and re-asses just what I hope to achieve, as this genre can suck up money like a tornado.

Getting back to your original question about a 'scope, yes, you can get a reasonable scope for your budget. In my internet wanderings I came across this thread .... https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/2...130pds/?page=1 I was amazed at some of the images posted using that scope. It is available locally for $349.00 here .... http://www.sirius-optics.com.au/astr...reflector.html

It does seem to require some fiddling and fine tuning to get optimum results so I guess you have to ask yourself what level of commitment you are prepared to give.

A warning !!! This genre can become addictive AND expensive. I too thought I'd just dip my toe in the water and 2000 odd bucks later I'm nearly ready to start imaging, and that's for a portable budget set-up using my DSLR and current lens.

My first mistake was with the mount as I have to leave home to get a clear view of the sky. I bought the NEQ6 Pro, the next level up from the HEQ5 Pro. The mount head weighs 16kg, the tripod 10 kg and throw in a battery of about 15kg and you have a fair bit of gear to tote.

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but do have a long hard think about just what you want to achieve.

Good luck in your deliberations.

PS: I've attached my first attempt at the Milky Way taken with a Nikon D800, Samyang 14mm f2.8, 30secs at f2.8, ISO4000. The original SOOC was a beige colour and required some heavy tweaking in CS6. I'd never use such a high ISO again, preferring to take multiple images at a much lower ISO and stacking them in the free program called DSS.