The “Golden Days” of astrophotography
June 18th 2010 13:00
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Iridium Flare 30 second exposure Nikon D80
In the “Golden Days” of astrophotography, taking a good picture of the night sky took a degree of luck skill lots patience and experience.
You needed to spend lots of time and money on cameras, film preparation and processing, not to mention developing countless rolls of expensive film.
Night shot of Jupiter taken with Nikon D80 camera
The digital era changed all of that, well almost. The early generation of digital cameras were expensive and difficult to operate, but that was then. The latest digital cameras are here, taking images of the night sky has become pleasure .
The arrival of off-the-shelf digital SLR cameras (or DSLR’s) now have the features enabling anyone take great photos of the night sky. There are many types of cameras used for astro photography some of the high end cameras cost in the access of $20000. These cameras are for the serious amateur or professional astrophotographer.
Photographers wishing to experiment with taking images of the night sky a good digital SLR camera will do an ample job.
Early first generation DSLR cameras produced high noise. These cameras did not perform very well for long-exposure deep-sky astrophotography.
Second generation cameras improved in terms of noise. They had a larger chip and provided a good signal-to-noise ratio. This is when astrophotography with DSLR cameras really became popular.
Star Trails 40 second exposure Nikon D80
Basically digital cameras can be assessed in four categories .
• Digital SLR Cameras (DSLR)
• Dedicated, Cooled Astronomical CCD Cameras (CCD)
• Digital Snapshot Cameras (DSC)
• Webcams
Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras - DSLRs have removable lenses. They offer complete creative manual or auto control over aperture, shutter speeds and ISO speed.
Astronomical CCD cameras - These cameras are specially cooled externally to reduce camera noise. This type of camera is specifically made for scientific and imaging this type of camera requires a computer to be used.
Digital Snapshot Cameras - DSC cameras have non-removable lenses and limited maximum exposure times. DSC cameras can be used for wide angle astrophotography . This type of camera will not be suitable for long exposures used in deep-sky imaging.
Webcams - Webcams are usually inexpensive cameras with colour CCD or CMOS chips that are made to stream video over the web. They work very well for high-resolution planetary imaging through a telescope, there overall use for deep-sky imaging will give poor results.
Orion Constellation 50 second exposure Nikon D80
The latest generation of cameras, such as the Canon 50D, 40D 450D, 1D Mark III, and Nikon D3, D3X, and D300 series provide a reasonable low signal- to noise –ratio giving excellent results in astrophotography at an affordable price.
Which camera is best Canon or Nikon
Nikon Camera
Canon Camera
Both Canon and Nikon cameras provide excellent images of the night sky and are very reasonably priced.
I use Nikon cameras because I have access to numerous lens options. Most of my images posted on this blog were taken by a Nikon D80.
Images by CarlCan
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