Image does not show on screen

[skfboiler]

I have a Canon T3i camera. Bright objects like the moon only appear on the LCD screen. But with planets and DSO's, nothing appears on the screen. I can't even see bright Saturn on the screen. I've tried both ways with an eyepiece in the adapter and prime focus. The settings I've been trying are Manual Mode, ISO 800, white balance set to daylight and various exposure lenghts etc. Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong.

[Stephen]

Trial and error I'm afraid. Try 5 or 10 second exposures and adjust the focus.

If the focus is out, you won't see anything.

[Geesus]

As stephen says... If your camera needs a certain amount of light per pixel in order to produce an image, you may not be getting enough in preview mode? (I may be wrong, but I presume you're talking about locating the object, not taking the picture?...) I'm not brilliant at cameras but if you've got a preview screen producing an image every 1/30 of a second (30fps), it's possible that your sensor chip needs 1/2 a second's worth of light for it to even register the object... AFAIK you can't change exposure time in preview mode without taking a picture (I hope that made sense!).

It could be worth aligning your scope so you can see the object in the eyepiece, taking 5 or 10 photos in which you adjust the focus at something like 5 or 10 second exposure... (pretty much what stephen said).

It might take a little longer, but at least you'll know you're looking at the right thing!

HTH

Ginger

[Photosbykev]

if your focus is off by only a small amount you won't see the subject in liveview. Try focusing on the moon first and then moving onto the subject. You will only see planets and stars in the liveview you will never see DSOs.

[Atlas]

For some reason with the Canon T3i, saturn is only coming onto live view at ISO 3200-6400 with my 152MM refractor. I'm still getting decent images after processing, but at 800-1600 it won't even show a blip on the screen. But don't worry, the other planets, Jupiter, mars, venus. show up really well on the canon. I'm going to attempt saturn on the 254MM reflector tonight to see if the bigger apature will help lower the iso need on saturn.