Astrophotography

[Walter White]

So I have always loved astrophotography pics and have been wanting to give it a try. I bought a Rokinon 14mm 2.4f ultrawide angle prime lens which is most recommended for night time photography.

I drove out to eldorado canyon at about 9:00 and snapped a few pics. All in all im pretty happy with how they turned being my first go at and considering Eldorado canyon still has a lot of light pollution especially at the horizon. You can see it in these pics but I still think it looks pretty cool.

My setting were ISO 3200, F2.8, 30 second exposure.

 

[reef dummy]

Very nice, I bought a 8" dobsonian this last summer and can't wait to fine tune it this year and check some planets out. Jupiter and it's moons were amazing. I was able to see Saturn too and it's rings but it was a little hazy because I haven't aligned the mirrors properly yet. We need a MASC subgroup of stargazers!

 

[SynDen]

Great shots man. Perfect exposure. Also one of my photo interests as well. Now all you need is a telescope with a tracking motor and you can take pics of nebulas, planets, clusters ect...

 

[Walter White]

Very nice, I bought a 8" dobsonian this last summer and can't wait to fine tune it this year and check some planets out. Jupiter and it's moons were amazing. I was able to see Saturn too and it's rings but it was a little hazy because I haven't aligned the mirrors properly yet. We need a MASC subgroup of stargazers!

Thanks I definitely need some more practice with this. I see lots of trouble areas with these pictures but they did turn out better than I thought I was going to get. I know nothing of telescopes but id be down for some star gazing. Im sure any place that is good for setting up a telescope is equally good for taking pictures.

Being that you are a star gazer and seem to have some knowledge in this area do you know what the best time of the year is for colorado to have line of sight to the galactic center of the milky way? I use an app called star walk to show me which direction to point the camera but it looks like most of the milky way is in the southern hemisphere sky this time of year. there are only a couple pics where you can just start to see the tail of it but thats it. The app I have lets you go forward and backward in time and it looks like maybe the best time of year is around July and August. Do you know if that is really the case?

Also what are good close by areas you can see from this map where I was is heavy on the light pollution. In may of these pics you can really see the light coming from Boulder. It did help that it was a new moon though.

 

[Walter White]

Great shots man. Perfect exposure. Also one of my photo interests as well. Now all you need is a telescope with a tracking motor and you can take pics of nebulas, planets, clusters ect...

Yeah I have been looking at the Edlekrone slider/tracker used for film and time lapse. Time lapse is something I really want to get into and the Edelkron can fit right in my camera pack and can be either mounted on a tripod or set on the ground if its flat and clear. They have programs you can down load for tracking stars and what not.

This video shows what it can do as just manual or with the power slider and tracking unit.

[video=youtube;C6uR73yHTN0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6uR73yHTN0[/video]

 

[reef dummy]

Total newbie so I can't answer your questions but if you ever want to get an adapter and use my scope for pics let me know.

 

[reef dummy]

Heres a pic with my daughter for size comparison

 

[Walter White]

Total newbie so I can't answer your questions but if you ever want to get an adapter and use my scope for pics let me know.

That would be awesome! I think a group of us should get together some time!

 

[Walter White]

Nice! Cute kid!!

 

[reef dummy]

That would be awesome! I think a group of us should get together some time!

Let's do it tanks and stars perfect, now all we need is a brewer lol.

 

[Walter White]

Just in case anyone is interested. This is the lens I used. I got it for under $300 on Amazon which is super cheap for a quality ultra wide prime that is this fast. The canon and nikon equivalents where upwards of $1000 more than this guy.

The downside is it is completely manual. Its not even chipped for focus confirmation which makes this lens extremely difficult to focus. The depth of field on this lens is so deep that when looking through the camera or on the screen even at high magnification everything just seems to be in focus even if its off quite a bit.

The company that makes this lens goes under several names Rokinon, Samyang, Bower, vivitar, etc and is known for QC issues. Its a fantastic lens and super sharp with almost no coma (if) you get a good copy. Many have reported having to send it back 2 or even 3 times for decentering issues before getting a good one. So just be warned if you are thinking of ordering one the cheap price tag does not come without some compromise. I think I lucked out mine seems pretty good however the infinity marker was not calibrated correctly so I had to do some minor dis-assembly to calibrate for infinity but that is really pretty easy to do and there is a video out there that shows how to do it. Its in Spanish though with English subtitle oddly enough lol.

 

[SynDen]

That is a big piece of glass, and thanks for the review

 

[cremer9]

[/URL][/IMG] Red Rocks

 

[Walter White]

[/URL][/IMG] Red Rocks

Red Rocks

Awesome!!

 

[cremer9]

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1581/23697120433_0de08977a1_z.jpg" width="640" height="426" alt="Startrails 2

 

[cremer9]

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1581/23697120433_0de08977a1_z.jpg" width="640" height="426" alt="Startrails 2

not sure what you used to get the imbedded picture thanks

 

[Walter White]

not sure what you used to get the imbedded picture thanks

I just used "

"

I like how the cars and other light make it looks like the hill side is on fire.

 

[cremer9]

Thanks It was taken with a sony Nex5 I had the 55-200 lens on. its about 30 pictures over a Hour layered together exposure was 30 sec per shot,it was when gobal was at Red rocks

 

[Walter White]

Thanks It was taken with a sony Nex5 I had the 55-200 lens on. its about 30 pictures over a Hour layered together exposure was 30 sec per shot,it was when gobal was at Red rocks

Ahhh I see I wondered what made the star trails look like that. I have that same lens for my Sony a6000. Love the Sonys. I would die to get my hands on one of the new A7S low light cameras that go over 400,000 ISO

 

[TheRealChrisBrown]

Very nice, I bought a 8" dobsonian this last summer and can't wait to fine tune it this year and check some planets out. Jupiter and it's moons were amazing. I was able to see Saturn too and it's rings but it was a little hazy because I haven't aligned the mirrors properly yet. We need a MASC subgroup of stargazers!

I have the Orion 10 inch Dobsonian that I take out quite a bit. I have a super laser collimator for mirror alignment if you ever want to get together we could spend some time collimating it. I took it to Moab last spring and the views were unreal, it was actually harder to spot things because there were so many visible stars!