best cheapest camera to photo starry sky

[phill28]

Hi all,

I really want to take pictures of the starry night especially constellations like orion but have a very small budget (not through a telescope).

I have the chance of the following cameras:

Nikon Coolpix 4300

Nikon Coolpix L810

Panasonic LUMIX LZ20

Would any of these be able to photo the stars?.

Thanks for any help in advance

[Schorhr]

Hello Phil,

why one of those? Smll chip aside, they only offer 4-8 seconds of exposure.

Some older used (5-20€) 3-6 megapixel canon cameras offer 15 - 30seconds of exposure and even though their sensor is small as well, they "capture more light per pixel".

What is your budget and your current equipment?

A modified CCTV can be useful too, and you can adapt a (cheap used) camer lens or get a 20€ telescope.

With a Sony SSC-V1, ISO 400, 4-30s, some stacked.

Orion nebula (1. center 20x4s), Plejads (2. right 10x8s) & Andromeda (3. bottom/r 24x10s),

http://www.bnhof.de/~ho4463/astro-sonyv1_1.html

[Schorhr]

Hi again,

Not sure about the sensor type but it seems like the Nikon coolpix 4300 has the lrgest pixel due to th lower resolution and 8s exposure.

BUT some cameres offer the full exposure length only at specific ISO settings.

None of those are really great for AP though, any other options, or do you have these laying around? If so - this is of course the best kind of equipment, if you allready own it! :-)

Also consider building a barndoor mount if you want to experiment with other cameras and tele lenses.

[Leveye]

If your going to go this route get a used Canon G11-G12 for 150-200 dollars and hack it with CHDK. It shoots RAW and with the hack you can get up to a 30 minute exposure. 

[Schorhr]

For how much do the old DSLR sell there?

[dph1nm]

Some Panasonic compacts (but not the LZ20 I don't think) have a starry sky mode just for this purpose. My TZ18 will do 60sec exposures.

NigelM

[ronin]

For fairly simple sky photography you really need a few basic features:

First is the ability to set an exposure manually of up to 30 seconds:_ If you stick a camera on a tripod press go and take a 30 second exposure then you will start to get a small amount of trailing. So 30 seconds is the most you can take and 20 - 35 seconds should be better.

Next is that you will have to be able to set the focus manually. In the low light levels at night an autofocus system will keep hunting for focus and you will not get anything.

Next it is useful to have a good ISO range that can be manually defined, you will want something like 1600, 3200 or 6400 ISO.

Finally you need to be able to set the aperture.

What happens on the DSLR's is that you define everything for the camera, it is turned into a fully manual unit. Many of the smaller cameras is that this simply cannot be done. The cameras are not setup it enable it.

So unless the previous are available on the model then I think it will be more difficult to accomplish.

[toxic]

as Leveye has say's chdk and most canon point and shoot camera's will do the job with there camera tricks and it do's not alter the camera it just loads from the memory card i had a canon ixus 6mp and it is capable of 99 minit exposure time at iso 3200 but you cannot remove the lens on that camera .

[EagleC]

Thanks for this thread, I've been wondering the same thing but have a Panasonic lumix tz7 already. I thought it only did an 8sec exposure but thanks to this thread I found the starry sky setting and got a terrible photo this evening. Set to 60 secs and got star trails and glare from nearby light pollution sources plus seeing is lousy tonight but proof of concept. Happy bunny.