Nikon D40 through SkyWatcher SW500C

[jacksonwarrior]

Just wondering how well a Nikon D40 will capture images through a SkyWatcher SW500C will all the right mounts and adaptors etc.

SkyWatcher SW500C
-aperture - 150mm
-focal length - 1000mm
-focal ratio - 6.7

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by jacksonwarrior

Just wondering how well a Nikon D40 will capture images through a SkyWatcher SW500C will all the right mounts and adaptors etc.

SkyWatcher SW500C
-aperture - 150mm
-focal length - 1000mm
-focal ratio - 6.7

Images of what Jackson?

I have a few cameras, and find that they're all good at their own things. Of the two DSLRs I have, my Canon 350 is probably a little better for general deep space photography, whereas my Nikon D40 murders the Canon for Lunar photography. Both are set to their default white points. The main issue on Nikon cameras such as the D40 is that the cameras internal software tends to be set to consider some smaller low-magnitude stars "noise", removing them (un-handily) when the image is pre-processed and written to the storage card. This can be bypassed by turning off the camera as soon as the exposure is done, because this forces the software to write the raw image data to the card before pre-processing can take place. A bit of a pain, but doable.

Here are a couple from my D40 a while ago. Processing wasn't fantastic by any means, but it shows that the D40 will work admirably. Please excuse the JPG artifacting due to compression.

Eta Carinae - Nikon D40



Moon - Nikon D40

[jacksonwarrior]

Thanks for the reply.
Those pictures of yours are better then i thought they would turn out. I cant wait to get out of the city and try this.

How would i go about mounting this camera to my scope?

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Those pictures of yours are better then i thought they would turn out.

LOL!! how'd you think they'd turn out? The D40 is a very good camera!