DSLR & telephoto lens Imaging Planets how realistic?

[birdboy]

Re: DSLR & telephoto lens Imaging Planets how realistic?

Well gave it all a go last night but all in all it was a catalogue of disaster and I ended up with nothing except a lot more understanding, still not enough though. .........

....
Tale of woe definitely but on a positive note I did see a satellite zoom past at one point as I was staring at random stars. That was before I opened the wine
Maybe I'll find some patience to try again tonight now I've reset the scope calibration on some distant trees, if it's clear of course.

Yes I feel your pain too Phil. In the daytime you think you are fully prepared and then when night falls everything is different and starts going wrong.. Planets have to be the most difficult and challenging to photograph well. Its a shame in some respects that there is a new moon when you are trying to set up your equipment. I try and focus during the daytime and make a note of which way I need to turn the focus knob to get further objects. Trouble is this hobby consumes money. A remote focuser is essential I feel. I also remotely control my camera over a USB extender cable 50ft worth. If you are interested check this out.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01EV33R8S/ref=pe_3187911_185740111_TE_item

[OM USer]

Re: DSLR & telephoto lens Imaging Planets how realistic?

Its dark so you don't expect to see anything. You haven't lined it up correctly so you don't expect to see anything. You havn't taken the lens cap off and its too dark to see that it is on... so you don't see anything. I even took some test shots to see if long exposures would show some stars

[KeithL]

Re: DSLR & telephoto lens Imaging Planets how realistic?

I have a Minox scope complete with their camera; but I found the results from it rather underwhelming! The camera is low resolution, and awkward to use; plus it seems set up so that it will only take a shot at maximum zoom, which you don't always want. I don't have time to mess about with it; but sometime if I get more time, I might see what it will do. It will take video, incidentally, but again the results are rather underwhelming.

When I had my old scope (can't remember the make), I bought an adaptor for Canon, straight into the camera body. I found the results from that set up very poor. You need a very expensive scope, I think, to get good results. Even though the Minox is quite an expensive scope, it doesn't perform as well at the max power end as you might wish. OK for record shots for birders/twitchers, but not for serious photography.

If you can get a good adaptor, a compact camera definitely performs better, but you have to find the best combination of camera zoom and scope zoom by trial and error. i found most adaptors (and I bought several) to be very poor at holding the camera square and truly central to the scope; and many let a lot of extraneous light in. That doesn't always matter, but if the sun is at the wrong angle....