Nikon D50 for Astrophotography?
Posted by admin | Under Camera D50 Digital Nikon SLR Wednesday Oct 7, 2009I am interested in getting into Astro-photography as a hobby I have a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera and a Meade 8800 Telescope with a camera mount and T adapter since my camera has several different setting which is the best to use for astro-photgraphy 100% manual or combination of Auto and manual settings? Any advice will be appreciated.
Yes, its fine. I notice another answerer has stated that it filters out wavelengths that you are interested it: ignore it. That refers to IR which you generally don’t want in your images anyway. Although you are using a Newtonian and so chromatic aberration is less of an issue it will still bite you if you use eyepiece projection to gain magnification or a focal reducer to lose it. Good quality optical components are designed to reduce chromatic aberration in visible wavelengths, and completely ignore IR. Nikon cameras have quite a following in the astrophotography community.
As for settings, yes, all manual. Use a slow ISO setting and the remote control if you have one (this reduces vibration when you open and close the shutter). For longer exposures you want a bulb mode but your camera has one so no problems there.
Output your images in RAW format. JPEG compression is good for photos of everyday objects but bad for astrophotography where many details are inherently low contrast, which is not something JPEG was designed to deal with.
Astrophotography is ultimately a specialist and complex area, though. You really need to read a few guides on the subject since a detailed treatment of the subject is not appropriate here.
Go all manual and long exposure. The problem with Nikon cameras (I have a D50), is that they will not be good for capturing distant objects such as galaxies (andromeda, etc) or nebula. The Canon cameras are. Nikon has a filter that eliminates the wavelengths you want for deep sky astrophotography. Other than that, you can always just get the right mounts for your camera and telescope and just practice. You want a wide open aperture and very slow exposure. Unfortunately, the D50 does not have a cable release for the shutter, just a dumb IR remote. I would suggest you get the IR remote as the simple vibration of your shutter closing can through off your shots, or you touching the shutter release. I think the IR remote works by holding it down, the shutter stays open (as long as you have the camera set to manual release).
I think the camera will not operate in any automatic mode when hooked up to the telescope as you’ll likely be using "manual" mount equipment.
Good luck. I bought a Fuji Finepix S3 Pro (built off of a Nikon body) that has a cable release and I use that for astrophotography, but I don’t use telescopes, unfortunately. Good luck!
References :
Yes, its fine. I notice another answerer has stated that it filters out wavelengths that you are interested it: ignore it. That refers to IR which you generally don’t want in your images anyway. Although you are using a Newtonian and so chromatic aberration is less of an issue it will still bite you if you use eyepiece projection to gain magnification or a focal reducer to lose it. Good quality optical components are designed to reduce chromatic aberration in visible wavelengths, and completely ignore IR. Nikon cameras have quite a following in the astrophotography community.
As for settings, yes, all manual. Use a slow ISO setting and the remote control if you have one (this reduces vibration when you open and close the shutter). For longer exposures you want a bulb mode but your camera has one so no problems there.
Output your images in RAW format. JPEG compression is good for photos of everyday objects but bad for astrophotography where many details are inherently low contrast, which is not something JPEG was designed to deal with.
Astrophotography is ultimately a specialist and complex area, though. You really need to read a few guides on the subject since a detailed treatment of the subject is not appropriate here.
References :