35mm SLR - practical?

[Lorne]

I dug out my old 35mm Olympus OM10 from the loft with a view to sticking it on the 'bay, but a look at what they were selling for - £20ish for whole set ups - has put me off, what I was wondering is if it would be feasible for astro imaging, bearing in mind I would have to put the films into a shop for developing. If feasible, what ISO film would be recommended? and what exposure times for both widefield images piggybacked onto my scope and DSO images T- ringed onto my low profile focuser. I never thought I'd get into AP being purely visual but if this isnt beyond the capabilities of my camera then I'm willing to try it.

Thanks for reading,

Lorne.

[Capricorn]

Will have to be ISO 400, suspect you cannot get any faster.

Aperture depends on the lens, try as wide as possible then 1 stop less then another stop less.

Exposures - really no idea, give 20 sec a go, then 30 sec a go.

What to aim at: Casseiopia, then just left of Deneb (Cygnus) for the Pelican and the NA nebula., Albireo, double cluster in Perseus. Pleiades, M13 in Hercules perhaps.

You will have to try each at different settings, and write down the object and the setting, for any future reference.

Getting them printed could be a fight, they may be classed as "gone wrong" and not printed, or the machinery simply cannot determine what exposure to apply to the paper as just about all the film image will be dark sky.

Down at Sidmouth Nik Sxymanek should some images (old) taken on film and they were quite good.

[The Sailor]

I thought about this last week, still have a few film camera and one is a 35mm SLR, I decided against using it for AP as I discard numerous DSLR images each night I am out and it would be prohibited in cost to use film. The other problem is what have I taken in the shoot, with DSLR I can see straight away and discard whereas with film one has to wait and no matter there is a cost buying and processing, I wll stick with DSLR .

Jim

[Lorne]

Thanks for replying

It looks like the SLR is heading back to the loft, I can imagine the wasted rolls of film from experimenting as I too delete over half my snaps on my compact digital. My venture into the "dark side" will be a non starter!

L.