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Digiscoping vs Teleconverter (1 Viewer)

A

A-L-E-X

Member
Hi all, I'm trying to decide between a couple of different options I have.

I love photographing birds, as well as astrophotography (moon, planets, distant nebulae and galaxies, etc.) and I need some advice on how to proceed.

I have a newly bought Fuji HS20EXR camera as well as a Celestron 8 SE Telescope that takes 1.25" eyepieces and has a focal reducer plus I also have a Meade generic 60mm refractor which also takes 1.25" eyepieces.

I dont have any adapters or anything and what I want to do right now is come to as close to filling the frame with the moon as possible. Should I:

1) Hold the camera up to the eyepiece of the telescope (let's say the Nexstar) and just zoom in manually OR

2) Get a teleconverter like the Sony VCL-DH1758 (1.7x) which will give me 1200mm at f/5.6

I would like to fill as many megapixels of the camera with the moon as possible but I want them to be quality pixels. I am worried that my 1.25" set up would cause some level of vignetting with the camera, which takes 58mm filters and TC threads, but if I crop the image this may not be the case. Regardless of the vignetting issue and the fact that using the camera afocally with the telescope could involve some image degradation because of all the extra glass/mirror surfaces (and how well would autofocus with the camera work on an image within the eyepiece of the telescope)--- would holding the camera to the telescope result in a higher quality, more detailed (and larger) image than my attaching a teleconverter to the camera?

I'm sure this can be applied to birding also, but in that case I would use my 60mm f/5.8 scope not the Nexstar 8 SE which is an 8" aperture scope and an f/10 instrument which is f/6.3 with the reducer.
 
Solar system photography is best done with a modified webcam type camera. See the Celestron NexImage for example.
 
I would take RJM's advice as it will likely be a long and expensive process otherwise. Other methods are to just stick a dslr on the back of a refractor or mirror scope, see my gallery (link is in my sig on the bottom of each post) for an example moon shot which is the last photo on that page. This was taken with the setup in the first photo. It's basically the same method as RJM mentioned but the dslr sensor is bigger than the webcams. The small webcam sensor gives a very tightly cropped image which when seen on the screen gives the impression of high magnification. This method requires some form of sky tracking, motorized tripod etc. With my setup you don't need this because the bigger dslr sensor equals much less apparent magnification.

For you particular Fuji camera I'd probably just go with some type of screw on converter. There's probably lots you can try via step rings if the threads don't quite match. You can pick them up on ebay cheap as that sort of converter has been around for years. Also look at ones made for video cameras too as they come up really cheap on ebay. I used to buy them quite often for using on an old Olympus digital camera that I once had.

The 1.25" set up would likely cause some vignetting. High zoom cameras don't tend to work too well for digiscoping as they vignette quite badly.

Paul.
 
A modified webcam is the best choice for solar system objects so you can take max frames-per-second to minimize the atmospheric affects on your pics. You use software to choose the best dozen or so frames and stack them for max contrast and resolution.


The Uk's Damian Peach a renowned solar system photographer. Might be looking over his site for best advise/ideas.
 
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I have a modified Logitech webcam with a 1.25" chrome barrel glued onto it and a 5m long usb cable attaches it to my laptop. It's ok for tiny far off planets but way too much magnification for the moon unless you want to capture close ups of single craters. For the moon just my 600mm 80ED and a 1.4X TC will pretty much fill the frame on a dslr. I've even managed Saturns rings, captured the bands on Jupiter and Mars ice caps with a couple of stacked teleconvers and a load of stacked photos in Registax. Going beyond what I do it all gets to be a bit of an expensive and specialized hobby.

If you want to photograph birds as well then it's going to be two completely different set ups and maybe a different camera too as a 30X zoom probably wont work through an eyepiece.

Paul.
 
Paul Corfield said:
I have a modified Logitech webcam with a 1.25" chrome barrel glued onto it and a 5m long usb cable attaches it to my laptop. It's ok for tiny far off planets but way too much magnification for the moon unless you want to capture close ups of single craters. For the moon just my 600mm 80ED and a 1.4X TC will pretty much fill the frame on a dslr. I've even managed Saturns rings, captured the bands on Jupiter and Mars ice caps with a couple of stacked teleconvers and a load of stacked photos in Registax. Going beyond what I do it all gets to be a bit of an expensive and specialized hobby.

If you want to photograph birds as well then it's going to be two completely different set ups and maybe a different camera too as a 30X zoom probably wont work through an eyepiece.

Paul.
Click to expand...

I'll probably take that advice and use a neximage or LPI, it's just that the resolution is so low, it's a concern.

This is what I have so far---

Cameras:

Olympus C-7070 with 3x teleconverter takes me out to 330mm (7.1 mp)

Olympus E-520 with 300mm lens (10 mp)

Fuji HS20EXR 720mm just got 2x teleconverter to get me to 1440mm (16 mp)

Telescopes :

Meade 60mm achromatic refractor (short tube) 350 mm

Meade 90mm achromatic refractor (long tube) 1000 mm

Celestron Nexstar 8 SE 8" SCT with erect image diagonal 2032 mm but with focal reducer / field flattener 1280 mm

I also have a ton of planetary, lunar polarizer and light pollution filters (UHC and O-3).

All my eyepieces, diagonals and filters are of the 1.25" variety.

I also have an Orion Steady Pix Camera mount to do afocal astrophotography.
 
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Thanks for your help! I'm going to get Registax also. How many images did you need to stack to get those well-defined images of the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn please? And what kind of shutter speeds, apertures and isos are we looking at? Thanks! I might be able to do this either with afocal with my scope or my 1440mm camera set up lol. What kind of focal lengths did you use on the more distant planets? Thanks!
 
Using 8 MP binned mode the Fuji HS20EXR is very low noise and highly detailed all the way to ISO 6400. It also does videos at 1080 P for 30 fps 720 P for 60 fps up to 30 min and 30 seconds of high speed mode--- 640x480 at 80 fps or 320 x 240 at 320 fps. It can do 8MP at 11 fps for one second or 11 fps at 4 MP for three seconds.

Is there a similar gain indicator for astrocams? I've always wondered, because I got to play around with the Meade DSI -3 color cam, and never could I tell what the iso on it was lol.
 
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Couldn't you put a 1.25" nosepice on your Olympus E-520 and put that straight into your Celestron Nexstar 8 ? That type of setup would capture good images of the moon I'd have thought. That's basically the same method I use for attaching my Canon dslr to my refractor, just a T-mount and screw in nosepiece. No lenses are needed on the camera, the image just projects straight onto the ccd. I should think the same method would work ok for some of the planets, galaxies, nebulae etc.

I generally work at around 1200mm to 1700mm with my scope and that top end is about the limit. Shutter speeds are still quite high as planets are quite bright. Maybe 1/60 at ISO800 for Jupiter. For the moon it's around 1/300 and at that speed just one frame will produce a very detailed image. For Jupiter it's maybe 50 frames and keep the best ones to stack. Turbulance is the problem on tiny planets and this is where it's better to go the webcam route. Plus the extra mag/cropping the webcam small sensor offers is the main attraction. I have to crop my dslr planet shots at near 100% and while this is possible on a decent dslr it has its limitations.

Paul.
 
A-L-E-X said:
Using 8 MP binned mode the Fuji HS20EXR is very low noise and highly detailed all the way to ISO 6400. It also does videos at 1080 P for 30 fps 720 P for 60 fps up to 30 min and 30 seconds of high speed mode--- 640x480 at 80 fps or 320 x 240 at 320 fps. It can do 8MP at 11 fps for one second or 11 fps at 4 MP for three seconds.

Is there a similar gain indicator for astrocams? I've always wondered, because I got to play around with the Meade DSI -3 color cam, and never could I tell what the iso on it was lol.
Click to expand...

Not sure about the Meade but I think astro ccd's are generally under 200 ISO.

Paul.
 
That's a great idea, Paul! Where can I find a 1.25" nose piece though?

Also, Im wondering if this would work or I should simply try to "insert" the lens mount into the diagonal---- here are some specs on the lens mount:

Four Thirds system lenses



The Four Thirds lens mount is specified to be a bayonet type with a flange focal distance of 38.67 mm.
 
Thanks, would you recommend using 1.25" light pollution filters or should telescope aperture take care of that issue? I'm also somewhat worried about possible vignetting or light loss/image quality degradation with 1.25" filters for astroimaging.
 
Perhaps best to seek this advice on a astro group like Cloudynights.com. They have a forum dedicated to solar system photography.
 
A-L-E-X said:
That's a great idea, Paul! Where can I find a 1.25" nose piece though?

Also, Im wondering if this would work or I should simply try to "insert" the lens mount into the diagonal---- here are some specs on the lens mount:
Click to expand...

You need a basic T-mount which are usually available for all cameras and I should think there's one for 4/3 cameras, search for a 4/3 T mount. Then you need a 1.25" or a 2" nosepiece like this one here. Not sure which country you are in but this is a UK website. If your scope is 1.25" only then you could use a 2" to 1.25" adapter and then use a 2" nosepiece on the camera. I use a 2" and a 1.25" and neither of them vignette my Canon 450D sensor.

I wouldn't mount this via the diagonal because then the image would be updise down. When you take the lens off of a dslr and mount it directly to the scope then the image is the correct way up, no need for diagonals or prisms to correct it.

Paul.
 
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Paul Corfield said:
You need a basic T-mount which are usually available for all cameras and I should think there's one for 4/3 cameras, search for a 4/3 T mount. Then you need a 1.25" or a 2" nosepiece like this one here. Not sure which country you are in but this is a UK website. If your scope is 1.25" only then you could use a 2" to 1.25" adapter and then use a 2" nosepiece on the camera. I use a 2" and a 1.25" and neither of them vignette my Canon 450D sensor.

I wouldn't mount this via the diagonal because then the image would be updise down. When you take the lens off of a dslr and mount it directly to the scope then the image is the correct way up, no need for diagonals or prisms to correct it.

Paul.
Click to expand...


Thanks Paul! My scope is a Nexstar 8 SE, which can use either 1.25" or 2" eyepieces, but I have a 1.25" visual back on it right now. I also have an f/6.3 reducer/corrector attached at all times.
 
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