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.
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.