DSLR Exposure Guides

[Mav359]

Hi Guys

Is there a list anywhere of recommended exposure times for planetary imaging. DSO's seem a bit easier in that you set the camera to BULB and expose for as long as possible guiding depaendant but i have tried the moon, sun & saturn and never seem to get it quite right. My Saturn subs the other night were completly burned out.

Is there a guide with recommend exposure times for the more local objects?

[Sparrow]

I think most people just tend to use trial and error to get the right settings. Take a photo - if it's too bright you know you need a shorter exposure. Conditions vary from night to night and therefore so will settings.

Imaging the moon for instance - a bright target so obviously you're not going to need high ISO. Take a 1/120 exposure - if too bright, try a 1/250 exposure or if too dark, try a 1/100 exposure. Or go for a slightly higher ISO to shorten these times.

Hope this helps

Regards

John

[Digz]

I think the short answer is no.

Im not a planetary imager but my understanding is that it is best to be shooting an AVI or series of short exposures which then get stacked. This will allow for the fluctuations in 'seeing' to be removed i.e. dud frames can be dropped and good frames stacked in something like registax.

As John says, it will mostly be trial and error and given planetary imaging uses short exposures it doesnt take up too much time to play about with it and find which exposure times suit you and your current conditions.

HTH.

[swag72]

I use live view when taking subs of the moon for example. The screen will darken as the exposure time gets shorter and you can quickly see that you are on the right track. From there you can tweak it as necessary.

[Jannis]

personally, for moon i use trial and error. but from what i've learned, around 1/500 - 1/1000 sec at ISO 100 at 1000mm F/5 with the 550D gives an ok result.

for deep sky object, wich i honestly isn't very good at yet, but i still think this methos shuold to to calculate exposure time:

I set camera at ISO 3200 or 6400, and see how long exposures i can take untill it gets washed out. then calculate from there. lets' say i can do 20 sec at iso 6400, this means at for example iso 400, wich is a more preferable iso in many cases, i'll have to set it to take roughly 320 sec. Then i take a sample pic at the desired iso and the calculated time, and see how it turns out. normally for me at least only minor adjustments are needed. saves me a lot of time to calculate from a high iso then use many minutes to "try out" different long exposures.

Thouh, this is something you usually do only a few times, and you've learned pretty much how long exposure you need at the selected iso if you have a stable sky darkness.

for planets i haven't really had much success yet, so i can't give any advise here. personally i use live view to adjust exposure time with iso set at 100-200 (higher isn't needed with my f5 scope at least, for jupiter and saturn), then take a sample pic to confirm it's not burned out, as i've noticed that the actuall pics usually on my 550d turns out slightly brighter then they appear on live view.

maybe this is the case for your 1000d also and is why you get burned out pics/videos even if they look ok on live view?