Improved tech = improved results. Who knew?
Finally went and bought a *real* camera, a Nikon D5000. At about $600, it’s at the low end of Good Camera prices. I spent today tinkering… and tonight taking test shots of the night sky. It has built-in long exposure settings up to 30 seconds. Here are a few early results:
The first two show the Milky Way and the skyglow of Ogden/Salt Lake City.
These two also show the Milky Way and skyglow… but up in the upper right corner I lucked out and caught three satellites zipping along.
Milky Way:
The last one is the least interesting to look at but in a way the most interesting in what it shows. It’s a shot of Jupiter, with an overexposed circualr disk of Jupiter visible, along with at least two moons visible. Niftily, just above and to the left of Jupiter is a blue-green speck… Neptune. I’ve never seen Neptune through a telescope before… and here it is visible via the standard lens that came with the camera.
A zoom lens is on order. It’ll be interesting to see what I can see with that.
August 21st, 2009 at 10:36 am
The lens is everything. The difference between a (retail) $200 and a $1000 lens is amazing. There are some really high end SLR lenses out there (I’m a fan of Leica) that you can get cheap and can mount with an adapter. You lose any autofocus capability, but the difference in clarity can be astounding.
August 21st, 2009 at 10:54 am
caught a disk of Jupiter ? Not bad for $600
August 21st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
They say, of course, it’s the photographer, not the camera, however….
Excellent results!, especially capturing Neptune along with Jupiter,
I particularly like the second shot down, the Milky Way looks almost 3-D,
like smoke from a forest fire.
What zoom lens you waiting for? A word of caution; modern zoom lenses contain a lot of glass, which means more light loss, unfortunatley, fast fixed=length lenses are better for this work, if hellishly expensive.
August 21st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Very nice. I’ve been thinking starting with this next year as well, when I buy an EOS 50D. I’m an old EOS user and have plenty of lenses still, so I stick with Canon.
I’m really wondering how the view of this would be from alpine areas above 1,500 meters. I remember it being magnificent, but that was without camera and zoom lense.
August 21st, 2009 at 9:11 pm
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