Wooo! Lots of good advice popped up over here overnight!
I'll start with MossyRocks post as it's a goldmine of info
Originally posted by MossyRocks I assume that the sigma lens you are referring to
is this one or one like it. So at max aperture at 300mm focal length would be 5.6 which is faster than your 300mm telescope so that is good. However you will likely be shooting at the long end and would likely want to stop it down a bit to deal with CA and enhance the sharpness a bit so it will suffer a bit from that. That said you should still get better quality images than you would from the inexpensive telescope. So my advise here is to stick with the camera lenses until you get a nice reflector scope. Your current scope likely will have tons of CA even if it is nice to look through with your eye.
Aye! The telescope I have is literally 2 elements (in 2 groups) - the chromatic aberration will be
terrible, and that's before we get to field curvature problems! However, I have never noticed it with my eye (the brain is literally fantastic at compensating for weird things like that... human eyes are pretty bad and need a
lot of post processing!)
Begging one's pardon, it's actually a
Sigma 75-300mm lens (I couldn't find it because I was typing in 70-300mm!). I actually really like it - mostly because I picked it up for £10 (~$15) and it has that vintage smell I can't get enough of!
So! Stick with the lens for now - excellent! That saves me faffing around with 3D printed adapters and miscellaneous tubes!
Originally posted by MossyRocks I would suggest as a progression of gear the following assuming you already have a camera with astrotracer already:
1. Get a
red intensifier filter for your existing lens if you are going to be shooting in places where the milky way isn't clearly naked eye visible.
2. A sturdy tripod if you don't have one, basically you need a stable place to shoot from but when starting out you don't need one of those ultra heavy duty astro ones that can support 300lbs. A good general purpose one works just fine.
3. A release cable.
4. a Bahtinov mask for any telephoto lens you do astro with.
4. Get a handful fast primes, likely a wide or ultra wide and a telephoto in the 200mm to 400mm range that is at least an f/4. The nice thing is that these can be used for things other than astrophotography.
5. After that don't bother with other mounts and just go straight for a proper nice motorized equatorial and matching tripod. Why waste your money and time on a bunch of half efforts. If thinking of getting a telescope do some research on what you want and get the equatorial so it can handle that sized scope.
6. Then depending on what you are photographing get a big reflector (Newtonian) telescope.
When it comes to lenses you don't need to necessarily buy the greatest most modern fancy glass either. One can
get very good results with old good glass. The key thing is that it be good so newer ultrawides will be better but old telephotos can be excellent lenses for astro.
1-good shout!
2-Currently have a half-dismantled ultra-heavy-duty tripod from an earlier project (designed to support an antenna array on a hillside during high wind for the purpose of performing
moonbounce (EME) communication - and it
was a heavy duty thing - made from 2x4s and welded steel - partially dismantled because I was modifying it to make each of the legs collapsable to make it easier for transport (despite it weighing a lot).
HOWEVER - that tripod is one big mutha - stable as a rock; but needs a car for transport so it's only good for back yard and car-based work (which was its original purpose). I can, however, build a much smaller variety of that which will somewhat resemble the tripods used for surveying instruments. Lightweight but with a wide splay for stability.
3-Already got one!
4-Good shout! I remember reading about those
many, many years ago in relation to various telescopes; they aren't terribly expensive either! In fact...Aye!
You can 3D print them! - score!
4(2)-I'll need to look into lenses at some point - I'm a bit lensed out at the moment though (my wallet certainly is!)
5-Now, interestingly, I was considering building a tracking mount for pointing an antenna array at amateur radio satellites a few months back - plug in the orbital parameters, hit "start" once the satellite passes the horizon and voila, the computer handles all tracking. The CAD work is all done (In fact, it is a remarkably simple design) - but it was never built because I wouldn't have enough space in my garden! The drive system, however, could easily be modified for polar tracking, and would be more than strong and powerful enough to support a decently sized telescope (it was, after all designed to support a 12-meter long axle with 2 4-metre-long antenna booms sticking out of it at right angles)
Definitely food for thought!
6-Some day!
So! Looks like I can get a decent chunk of that out the way myself and make a decent start!
Originally posted by MossyRocks I would also suggest figuring out what you want to shoot before throwing more gear at the problem, star fields, landscapes with stars/the milky way in them, planets, the moon, deep sky objects, chase tiny galaxies, etc. What you like to shoot will determine your gear selection.
Hrm - I don't know yet! My plan was to throw as I reasonably can at a wall and see what sticks!
It's probably easiest to go for the moon first since it's big and bright! Probably followed by a few planets, BUT at the same time I also want to try and get a shot of andromeda and the orion nebula.
So: my initial goals are for the Moon > Planets > Deep sky - by which point I should have a decent idea if I like it or not!
Originally posted by MossyRocks I few months back I wrote up a couple of guides on starting out with astrophotography that are very much the nuts and bolts of starting shooting to get people pointed in the right direction. On one
shooting the moon (always a good first target) and another one that is more general introduction to shooting
other astro images. At some point I will write up a processing guide to also get people pointed in the right direction there too but I'm still working on getting better and ironing out all my regular mistakes. I don't want to point people in the wrong direction.
Oooh! More bedtime reading
Will have a gander shortly!
Originally posted by MossyRocks Now just go out and shoot even if you don't have the perfect gear yet. Then post your images over in the
astrophotography group and ask some questions or for general advice on them. We are all pretty helpful over there and even the disasters I have posted there I got constructive criticism on and no one was mean about them. Trust me some of them were really bad.
Haha, as far as I'm concerned, nobody can
ever have "perfect" gear: even if I had the most expensive and miraculously effective gear in existence, I will still take bad photos until I learn how to use it - and if I don't know the basics I'll never learn how to use it properly at all! As such I always encourage people to get their work out there (regardless of the type of work: photography, painting, music, programming, literature, dance moves - I don't care! Show people!) - sure you get a few negative people who just say "yuck that's terrible" - those are people you can safely ignore - the ones you want to listen to are the ones that tell you
why it's not as good as it could be, and if you get lucky,
how to improve it!
In other words, as long as
you like it then it's not a bad photo (unless you like it
specifically because it's bad!) and nobody can take that away from you. Unpopular does not mean bad any more than popular means good (argumentum ad populum). BUT that also doesn't mean that it can't be improved - EVERY photo can ALWAYS be improved! It's just you reach a point where the improvements get more and more subtle (diminishing return on improvements).
Lol that was a bit off topic - I was merely saying I'll get posting as soon as I get a few pictures that I actually like!
I have a bunch of other photos awaiting upload as well - just need to fire them through darktable and we'll be good to go!
Anyhoo! I'll respond to the other posts shortly - I started with this one as it was the most in-depth!
Thanks for that
Much appreciated!