17 replies to this topic

[apalazzi]

Hi,

 

I've just started with astrophotography, and after a few attempts I've decided that it's a hobby that will keep me interested me for some time; so I decided that I will spend some money on some upgrades, and I'd like to have some suggestion on where to spend to get the best results for the money.

 

Right now I use a Canon EOS 500D/Rebel T1i with a camera tripod and a kit 18-55 f3.5-5.6 lens.

Ideally upgrade(s) will allow me to:

1) more immediately improve on my photos

2) do some astrophotography while on holidays; since I do my holidays on a bicycle, the upgrades must be compact, lightweight and sturdy enough to survive some rough handling.

The absolute maximum budget must stay under 200€, but I would rather keep it around 100€-150€.

I don't mind buying used.

 

The item (2) is only relevant on my summer vacation, so it's not an immediate goal; at the very least, I think I could go for my actual equipment but with a prime lens plus a "barn hinge" tracker.

 

To improve on my photos instead I feel that I need a (motorized) tracking mount, plus a prime lens or a telescope.

 

So, for the mount I was looking on ebay, and I found some cheap Celestron EQ1 mounts, that can be motorized with little effort (or little money): are they any good, or it's better to stay away from them?

For the lens, I was thinking of buying a 135mm or 200mm prime lens, that I could also take with me on holidays.

If instead you thing I should go for a telescope, which is the minimum you recommend? What should I look for?

I've also seen some reflecting telscopes for around 190€ with the mount, are they good or is just a waste of money?

 

Thanks for the advice

Andrea

[imtl]

I'll let others to recommend you with mounts and scopes and camera etc.

What I want to say is that you just started and you are looking for upgrades that will immediately improve on my photos.

 

The way to achieve that is to first maximize you current setup and work on your processing of images. This is far more important then to rush and upgrade and upgrade and upgrade.

[darkhatterphotos]

I agree with imtl. Sharpening your processing skills will pay dividends when it comes to your final result. The added bonus is that, even if/when you upgrade equipment, processing will continue to be essential. Unless you pay for expensive software (not required), improving processing ability can cost $0 and requires only the investment of time.

Edited by darkhatterphotos, 05 February 2023 - 02:10 PM.

[dswtan]

+1 Eyal. But I do think we can say that a star tracker would be the most glaringly clear upgrade, over the current static tripod. 

OP will have to get lucky to get a good one under $200 though, I think. I've had my eye on a iOptron SkyGuider Pro as a nice portable one for me, but I'm not sure it it's the current "best". 

But it is something that will last a while -- I still use my ancient AstroTrac TT320X-AG, even after many years. Good for comets, etc. (That one is a bit unwieldy for bike trips IMO.)

 

PS. Some inspiration: https://astrobackyar...trophotography/

Edited by dswtan, 05 February 2023 - 02:11 PM.

[apalazzi]

I'll let others to recommend you with mounts and scopes and camera etc.

What I want to say is that you just started and you are looking for upgrades that will immediately improve on my photos.

 

The way to achieve that is to first maximize you current setup and work on your processing of images. This is far more important then to rush and upgrade and upgrade and upgrade.

Yes, I understand that the skills are maybe even important than the gear, and that's why I set this low budget: to not end up spending on upgrades when the bottleneck is not there.

On the other hand, I think that the gear also has its importance - otherwise there wouldn't be people spending thousands of $$ on equipment; and if I can make some cheap upgrades that can help me keep motivated while I learn, well, I welcome them.

 

Thanks anyway for your advice.

Bye

Andrea

[darkhatterphotos]

From my experience, speaking strictly equipment, the mount is the most important piece of equipment. A good equatorial mount or star tracker will allow you to take longer exposures without star trailing. If I was on a limited budget but wanted to move up from a DSLR/tripod setup, I would look at a star tracker. I'm not sure what you could get for that budget, though, and you'll want to be sure you have a way to attach your camera to it (otherwise you may end up with more expenses than planned)

[AstroVagabond]

What is it about your current images that you want to improve. Please be specific. And to what extent do you want to improve them?

 

You may do better waiting to do anything for now so you can build up your funds over time.   

Edited by AstroVagabond, 05 February 2023 - 03:07 PM.

[JF1960]

Good mounts can be very expensive.  I am a noob too.  I am taking a spread out the upgrade expense path.  If you immediately have thousands to spend.  Buy a good mount first so you don’t need to upgrades later.  Here is what I did instead.  My path, in the long term, will actually be more expensive.  But, it is incremental expense as you go.  I can’t justify an expensive mount up front myself until I get over my noobness.  So, I decided on incremental expenses as I get good.  I’d love anyone to chime in on my ideas also.  I just started and may be taking the long way on this journey and would appreciate some expert help.

 

1.  Take wide angle photos of the night sky using your camera and just a tripod.  This is a step where you can still begin using processing software to get nice photos of moon and Milky Way.  You can learn how to stretch and reduce noise in these pictures and get some really cool results.  Use a wide angle lens and 30 second exposures and the star trailing won’t be noticeable.  

2.  If you already own a nice primary lens, get a star tracker like the iOptron listed above.  This step is where you can learn the basics on Polar Alignment and be able to shoot some DSO objects with exposures up to 90 seconds once you get good at polar alignment.  If you don’t have a fast or good enough primary lens with at least 200mm focal length, it may be worth skipping to step 3.

3.  Get a new primary scope.  I went for a RedCat51 because it is VERY noob friendly and provides a wide angle view for capturing deep sky objects even when your tracking isn’t so great.

4.  Get a decent GOTO equatorial mount.  If your are really excited by your progress, look into getting a decent mount.  But this step can be a pretty big upgrade because you’ll want to get a big enough mount to support your future upgrades and also add a guide scope and camera and software.  I didn’t have enough money to get the mount that supports any potential new upgrade.   So, I got the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 Pro at this step.  It supports up to 22 pound payload, is half the price of a good mount, and will last me a while.  But, is not the mount that will support me forever (probably).  Right now I am using the RedCat and DLSR so it is plenty good.  I added the ASIAIR and am learning the fundamentals of good guiding and tracking with this mount.  It’s a perfect setup for this sort of learning.  Having a lot of fun and get really excited to see round stars on my long exposures!!  You can split this step up if you want to.  You just have to be sure you get a mount with a hand controller.  You can add guiding and ASIAIR later if you want.

5.  Replace my DLSR with a dedicated astronomy camera.  Current, my skills don’t really warrant this sort of upgrade.  I am not going to mod my DLSR and it is working fine so far.  Once I get a lot more comfortable with my processing skills and setup, I am sure I am going to want to take this next leap.  Need to save a while as I am leaning towards a good camera that may last a while.  Not even shopping yet on this step.  Probably won’t pull the trigger for 6 months or more.

6.  The next step probably won’t happen unless I am really serious about my progress.  It will include a new primary scope and mount.

  

 

 

Edited by JF1960, 05 February 2023 - 03:21 PM.

[apalazzi]

From my experience, speaking strictly equipment, the mount is the most important piece of equipment. A good equatorial mount or star tracker will allow you to take longer exposures without star trailing. If I was on a limited budget but wanted to move up from a DSLR/tripod setup, I would look at a star tracker. I'm not sure what you could get for that budget, though, and you'll want to be sure you have a way to attach your camera to it (otherwise you may end up with more expenses than planned)

Thank you for your advice.

 

Are you familiar with the Celestron's EQ1 mounts? There are a couple of them that come in for cheap, but are they any good?

 

Bye

Andrea

[apalazzi]

What is it about your current images that you want to improve. Please be specific. And to what extent do you want to improve them?

 

You may do better waiting to do anything for now so you can build up your funds over time.   

I'd like to be able to take photos of nebulae and galaxies whith enough detail that they can "fit the frame", so to speak; looking at my photos I feel that I won't be able to take the Andromeda galaxy for example with my 18-55 kit lens, unless -maybe- I put the lens at 55mm/f5.6 and stack an insane amount of shots.

If I can buy something to help me achieve this for cheap, that would be nice; otherwise I'll wait.

 

Bye

Andrea

[marter]

I'd like to be able to take photos of nebulae and galaxies whith enough detail that they can "fit the frame", so to speak; looking at my photos I feel that I won't be able to take the Andromeda galaxy for example with my 18-55 kit lens, unless -maybe- I put the lens at 55mm/f5.6 and stack an insane amount of shots.

If I can buy something to help me achieve this for cheap, that would be nice; otherwise I'll wait.

 

Bye

Andrea

That's the way I started. And so did many others here.

 

IMHO, don't go cheap. You'll get what you pay for. And you won't be safisfied. Work with what you have, learn how to process, read everything you can here and get an idea of the direction you want to go. Then get good quality gear.

Just my opinion. Enjoy the journey.
 

[AstroVagabond]

I'd like to be able to take photos of nebulae and galaxies whith enough detail that they can "fit the frame", so to speak; looking at my photos I feel that I won't be able to take the Andromeda galaxy for example with my 18-55 kit lens, unless -maybe- I put the lens at 55mm/f5.6 and stack an insane amount of shots.

If I can buy something to help me achieve this for cheap, that would be nice; otherwise I'll wait.

 

Bye

Andrea

 

Maybe you will find some insight win this article: https://astrobackyar...hy-camera-lens/

 

I'm all for trying to make things work with a limited budget as long as your expectations are inline. 

[apalazzi]

Maybe you will find some insight win this article: https://astrobackyar...hy-camera-lens/

 

I'm all for trying to make things work with a limited budget as long as your expectations are inline. 

Thank you for the link; I see that he uses the 75-300mm lens at 200mm, plus he states that "there is one key piece of astrophotography equipment that is critical for a truly amazing shot. The key to capturing a great photo with a camera lens like this is the star tracker."; which basically confirms my impression that I could benefit from both lenses and a tracker. Now the question is wether there's something decent within my budget limit.

 

 

Bye

Andrea

[mayhem13]

Given your budget and gear Andrea, you’re in what’s called a Catch 22 situation. Your kit lens is pretty bad throughout its zoom range so I’d suggest it be the first to go…..I would sell/trade it and add the € to your €200 budget. 
 

With such a limited budget, my suggestion would be to choose a prime lens focal length that fits the available targets and the limits of your gear in that you cannot track objects at this time. Your options are wide angle lenses for landscape astro that would include the Milky Way up to no more than 135mm which would still allow for 1 second exposures without star trailing. In between lengths will offer panorama and mosaic composites of the Milky Way in more detail.

 

Don’t be afraid of pre owned lenses if you can locate a reputable reseller with recourse to return the lens if there’s a problem. Use your limited budget to avoid things that aren’t needed like auto focus and auto aperture……you will need to set those manually for optimal results. 
 

In your current state of experience and gear, I would pursue the widefield landscape Milky Way first with a prime lens of somewhere in the 14-18mm range and with a fast ratio of 2.4 or better. This will allow you to take untracked exposures of around 15-20 seconds in length before stars become oblong. With this approach you can re center your frame every 5 minutes or so and gather enough frames for a spectacular Milky Way panorama.

 

Best of luck on your journey!

[ComeAlongBort]

I started a couple years ago now... I did a bunch of gear upgrading early on and quickly learned something.

*You're almost definitely not maxing out the capabilities of your gear.*

The biggest (and cheapest!) investment you can make is in your skills.

Watch processing videos, learn a bunch, join a local astronomy club and ask a bunch of questions...

A star tracker will help, but you don't really need an expensive one. I'd get a star adventurer 2i or GTI and then spend a year or two trying to get results with that setup.

Shoot the same target every few months if you can, and reprocess the data. You'll quickly get to see how much you've improved.

Once you truly don't think you can improve beyond what you can do with the gear you have THEN consider upgrading. Otherwise you're going to spend a bunch of money before you actually know what you're doing, and in a year or two you're going to regret it, since you'd probably have made different decisions with the new information you have.

This is EXACTLY how I ended up with 3 star trackers.

I took a couple long exposures just on a tripod and bought a Move Shoot Move tracker, which is a great little thing for traveling, but doesn't have much payload capacity. Upgraded to a StarWatcher SA 2i and used that for a while... got an autoguider and was bummed I could only guide in one axis... then the GTI came out and I bought that too... then I realized that I've been going too fast. So I've since decided to slow TF down and enjoy the gear I have for a few years. 

At this point I'd LOVE to upgrade to a telescope, mono cameras, filter wheels...but I need to slow my roll a bit. I have plenty of improving to do with my setup, so I'm going to do that. I recommend you do the same thing. 

Edited by ComeAlongBort, 06 February 2023 - 08:22 PM.

[fewayne]

If you want the best tracking at the absolute lowest weight, bulk, and cost, the best upgrade you could make is to change your brand of camera. Pentax has a feature called Astro Tracer that uses the shake reduction on actuators built-in to the camera body to move the sensor to compensate for sidereal motion. It sounds like an absolute hack, but I can tell you for certain that it works, certainly below 300 mm focal length, and I've gotten it to work up to 500.

 

 And this, coupled with the fact that a Pentax DSLR will mount any Pentax or third-party glass ever made to the K mount or M42 standard*, gives you everything from tracked Milky Way images on up to deep sky, at least on brighter objects. Since you don't need and can't use auto focus or really auto-anything-else, you can make use of any of the thousands of lenses going back to the 1970s. The Pentax 200 mm F/4 gives particularly good results; some of their longer and wider lenses do also, but those are quite spendy.

 

 And the Pentax bodies are built to a very high standard, with even the "consumer" DSLRs featuring weathersealing, durable magnesium bodies, and excellent ergonomics. I've beaten my 12-  and 10-year-old bodies with rain, snow, dust, falls biking and skiing...so long as you don't actually drop them underwater, they just keep shooting great pictures.

 

 I try not to beat that drum around here too often, because it smacks of "this is what I have and so it must be the best", but for you I can't think of a better setup. Some bodies (e.g. my K-5) need an external GPS dongle to do AstroTracer (~$200), other, later ones have it built in.

 

It's not an equatorial mount. But it adds no (or very little) weight and bulk to the camera gear you'd be taking anyway.

 

--

*Not the same as the astronomy and M42 standard

Edited by fewayne, 06 February 2023 - 10:18 PM.

[apalazzi]

Hi,

 

Just a little followup: I've purchased a vintage 135mm/f2.8 lens (40€) and a Omegon Minitrack LX2 (75€) for a grand total of 115€, which is well within my budget.

 

Here is my first decent result with this setup:

 

 

I dare to say that this is already much better - even though is not yet "good" - and I still think that it would have been impossible to achieve something similar with my previous equipment, even if I were to stack thousands of frames (and I did stack 700 frames...), even if I were extremely skilled in postprocessing.

Also, NOW I'm sure that the limit is me and not the equipment and I need some time to get better at  pointing to the stars, orientating the tracking mount, etc. Sure, the tripod is shaky as hell and there are better trackers out there and the lenses have a considerable amount of distortion, but I think that this little upgrade will keep me motivated while I practice on everything else, and then decide if I want to take a bigger step into astrophotography or it was just a temporary interest.

 

Thanks to anyone who has given me some advice.

 

Bye

Andrea

 

 

Edited by apalazzi, 12 February 2023 - 09:15 AM.

[gsaramet]

Hi Andrea!

 

Congrats on the image. However, you should be able to get way better images than this without the star tracker, just with a tripod.

 

You need is a remote trigger. I don't know if your camera is able to be connected by the phone via bluetooth or you need a remote. Worst case scenario, most Canon cameras can be "shot" by using a a cabloe of old phone earbuds+mic; the mic button works as a shutter release. You might control it with a laptop, if there is software available for the camera. Shoot raw. 

 

What's important is NOT touch the rig when shooting. A good rule of the thumb is to set the speed to 1/(f x crop_factor) and shoot. When you get this under control, it's time to add the tracker to the equation. With proper polar alignment that should increase your possible exposure time quite a lot. I think you'll have quite a lot of fun and even more cursing and yelling

 

Now comes the bad news. 1. That's basically the end of the road for that rig.  2. Most of the things you learned with this rig will not be very useful when you upgrade.