Decent lens for shots with Canon EOS 550D

[ian-d]

Hi all, been a while since I've been on hear.

I've grown a little frustrated of my telescope because the zoom isn't particularly long and being manual, requires considerable amount of movement to continue to enjoy the wonders out there.

I have a Canon EOS 550D SLR which whilst isn't the most spectacular of cameras, it is fantastic for me. I now wouldn't mind considering pointing it to the Sky (on a tripod) and taking pics to enjoy on my PC, rather than having to enjoy for the brief seconds I get with the telescope.

At present I only have the basic 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens and was wondering what lenses you'd recommend and what kind of shots can be achieved?

I ideally don't want to spend too much, <£1k, so not sure what would suit best? Any help appreciated.

[ian-d]

Conscious that my post has already been buried deep in the forum pages for no one to see, just giving it a quick bump wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this please?

[RikM]

It depends what sort of objects you are interested in Ian. For wdiefield images of whole colstellations you can get great results with a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. With mounting the camera on a static tripod you will only be able to take relatively short exposures and the longer the focal length, the shorter you can open the shutter before star trails start to be noticable. (unless of course you want to shoot star trails, which can be very nice).

Try the 18mm end of your kit lens, with the aperture wide open and give it 20sec or so. Take 20 - 30 shots and run them through deep sky stacker. You will be amazed at how many stars there are up there.

[jgs001]

I'd suggest go with the 18mm of the kit lens as a starting point... take a look at

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-tips-tricks-techniques/73737-basic-widefield-camera-tripod.html

[ollypenrice]

Your problem is not the lens, it's the mount. You can't do anything much on a fixed tripod because you need to track, but have a look at these;

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/173395-m45-using-new-vixen-polarie-travel-mount.html

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/173531-another-image-using-new-vixen-polarie-m42.html

The other mount option is the Astrotrac.

For a really great astro lens there's the EF200L, used here with a CCD camera and autoguided mount. (This lens was £500 second hand.)

Olly

[JB80]

How come I had never heard of the Vixen Polarie before?

Guess I hadn't been paying enough attention, it looks like a great little contraption.

*off to investigate*

[Psychobilly]

It first came up on here a come of weeks ago....

Maybe Goggle finally accepts its existence because it wanted to keep auto-correcting the search to Vixen Polaris...

http://stargazerslounge.com/discussions-mounts/169381-vixen-polarie.html

I posted a link to the User Manual in that thread...

here it is again...

http://www.vixenoptics.com/PDF/POLARIE%20Manual.pdf

I hope the reasonably priced polars scope adaptor materialises...then I would definitely consider one...

Getting back to the original question...

Don't rule out some of the Very nice Older glass out there including the Super Takumars, Leica Telyt's , Zeiss, Nikon etc...

Peter...

[JB80]

Thanks for the links.

Sorry to veer off topic.

[ian-d]

Thanks for the replies; my thoughts were more about taking pictures of the moon, jupiter etc rather than widefield images. I was planning on using the tripod simply to take individual shots but I'm an absolute novice, so maybe that isn't possible?

Some of the pictures in this thread are amazing, yet I'm not sure how achievable the different colours are as I never spot anything like this, even with the telescope.

Sure all the above doesn't make any sense, but I'm still new to all of this

[E621Keith]

Most photographic lens will not have the magnification necessary to image Jupiter on an DSLR. In fact most telescope don't either. That's why webcam and big CAT are popular among planetary imagers.

To get a good image of the moon on a APS-C size chip, you really need a lens with a focal length near 1000mm.

[jgs001]

If you have the mounts for attaching camera to scope then the moon with your slr is certainly achievable. I have been known to do just that on many an occasion. The planets can e done but you have I crop really hard even at 1500mm, an slr is not the right tool.

[sabana]

Astrotrac is what you need. I'd also advise a wide angle lens 10-20mm for a cropped sensor like the 550.

Astrophotography Made Easy - Home

Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSM Canon-ef

[Psychobilly]

These days the Astrotrac isn't the only tool in the box... Nice to see a bit of healthy competition coming along hopefully this will drive prices down...

[cwesley1]

i did this video with my 550d and a sigma 18-200mm lense set on video crop mode

[Darth Takahashi]

Build yourself a barn-door tracker then you can use a normal photographic tripod. There cheap and easy to build with minium amount of skill and tools.

There's a lot of info on the Internet?

The Astrotec is just a glorified barn-door tracker nothing more or less.

[ian-d]

Thanks for the replies, I guess maybe my SLR isn't the ideal tool then without connecting up to a telescope, of which mine is basic so isn't capable of this.

What still confuses me (sorry, novice alert) is how the example pictures near the top of this post are taken with a SLR and show up so many more stars than I can even see with my telescope, plus still absolutely confused by how those colours (reds, blues etc) are achieved; raw pictures or manipulated in photoshop?

[E621Keith]

Thanks for the replies, I guess maybe my SLR isn't the ideal tool then without connecting up to a telescope, of which mine is basic so isn't capable of this.

What still confuses me (sorry, novice alert) is how the example pictures near the top of this post are taken with a SLR and show up so many more stars than I can even see with my telescope, plus still absolutely confused by how those colours (reds, blues etc) are achieved; raw pictures or manipulated in photoshop?

They are taken by stacking multiple long exposure frames. Each frame is typically a few minutes long, and the total exposure time runs into hours. During that time, the mount must compensate for the Earth's rotation precisely so the tracking error is less than a pixel. This is why astrophotography mount get so expensive.

Through long exposure, you can image much dimmer objects than you can see with your eye. The colour will have to be readjusted, but they are real. I will let someone more qualify to explain the rest.