[ATMoB-discuss] DSLR able to be used for astrophotography

[Bernie Volz (volz)]

The Nikon D70 (and others in the D series) have BULB setting so you can
take a picture as long as you want.

Though sadly the D70 (at least) can't accept a standard shutter release
cable and you have to manually hold down the shutter -- if I recall, the
remote control unit can be used and requires two presses but it has been
a while since I used that and may be recalling incorrectly. The IR
remote control is also not very easy to use for astrophotography since
you must use it in FRONT of the camera. If you purchase MaxDSLR
(http://www.cyanogen.com/products/maxdslr_main.htm) or other software,
you can take any length of exposure since this allows computer control
of the camera.

I also have the D70 and have tried it at night (with normal lens and at
prime focus w/o lens). Works very well. At prime focus, used MaxDSLR.

The Canon series seems to be more popular for astrophotography, so if
you have no old Nikon lens and other Nikon equipment (as I did), you may
well want to consider Canon.

As George points out, the best things about the Nikon D70 are:
- Instant power on and shooting (though sometimes the auto-focus can
delay the shot).
- Long battery life (you can take many 100s if not 1000s of shots) on a
single charge.
- Extremely flexible - from fully manual to fully automatic (ie, point
and shoot).

- Bernie 

-----Original Message-----
From: atmob-discuss-bounces at atmob.org
[mailto:atmob-discuss-bounces at atmob.org] On Behalf Of George Roberts
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 1:00 PM
To: atmob-discuss at atmob.org; Bern Kosicki
Subject: Re: [ATMoB-discuss] DSLR able to be used for astrophotography

> I'm looking for a DSLR for use both for general photography and 
> astrophotography.

There was some discussion about this a few weeks ago.  I particularly
liked John Boudreau's email on the subject here:

http://lists.atmob.org/pipermail/atmob-discuss/2006-November/002821.html

For more discussion go here:
http://lists.atmob.org/pipermail/atmob-discuss/2006-November/thread.html
And click on the threads mentioning "Best <$400 camera for astro
photography"

Isn't it bad to get lots of pixels?  Because then aren't the pixels
smaller?  Which means they collect less light?  It might be good to get
as few megapixels as possible but I don't think you can get much less
than 5 in a DSLR.

I have the Nikon D70 and I absolutely love that camera.  I don't use it
for astro but tried it out a few times at night.  I don't think you can
do exposures longer than 30 seconds so check that particular feature in
the cameras you look at.  Most of these cameras do an auto dark frame
subtraction for you which is annoying if you take lots of pictures
because you only need one dark frame per temperature/exposure (as the
camera cools it has fewer "hot" pixels).  

For general photography, the DSLRs are just awesome.  They take the
picture much faster (my old point and shoot digital took a whole second
which is plenty of time for my kids to run from one end of a room to the
other).  They have better built in auto focus, I can use my old powerful
flash, I have lots of lenses, mine takes 3 pics per second,and it holds
about 1000 pictures and the batter lasts for months between recharges
(that's a few thousand pics).  For an idea of the speed of taking a
picture - I photograph my kids at basketball games and I can punch the
shutter button when the ball is up in their hand (instead of on the
floor) every time I take a picture *and* I can get 5 continuous bounces
no problem without missing any.  The camera is adjusting focus (you need
that with F/2 135mm when subject is running towards you) and exposure
between each of those 5 pics also.

- George Roberts
http://gr5.org
_______________________________________________
ATMoB-discuss mailing list
ATMoB-discuss at atmob.org
http://lists.atmob.org/mailman/listinfo/atmob-discuss