Hello, I would like to know if the Orion 80mm short tube is a good telescope to use for film astrophotography. I will be doing some DSO's with my film SLR. Does CA show up on the pictures you take with this telescope and if it does what can be done to the telecope to minimize it?
That would be a decent budget scope for astrophotography. You will see a lot of bluish fringe on stars. Long exposure photography really shows color very well compared to the eye.
The short tube 80 at f/5 is plenty fast to capture DSO's. And its lightweight so it will be easy to handle on a small/inexpensive mount. So for the most part its a good scope for astrophotography. The downside is that you'll definitely see a significant amount of CA. You can use a minus violet filter to help eliminate it and also post-processing with Photoshop or The Gimp.
I used the Orion short tube 120 which is also f/5 and it worked good for a budget/beginner scope. After a while I was fed up with the CA causing bloated and blueish stars.
My next imaging scope was a Megrez 80ED triplet. It was better with CA but still showed a significant amount of blue fringe. The best imaging scopes on a $750 budget that I have seen are the Vixen ED80sf and the Orion ED80. The former runs about $700 and the latter $500.
Here's what to expect in terms of flase color. Notice the blue fringe in this image taken with the 120ST. No minus-violet filter and little or no post-processing. Beehive cluster in Cancer:
Put a Minus-Violet filter on it, and it will do much better.
CF
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