Wife's bought a D7000 for work...

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...so naturally i will be procuring it for a bit of AP

Never done anybefore, i dont have a tracking mount, and for the time being i will be doing unguided AP from my manfroto tripod with the standard 18-105mm lens...any pointers?

Having never had a "proper" camera ive had a read of what ISO, f and shutter speeds i should be looking at, does anyone here have any idea of what i could expect to achieve image-wise?

And if anyone is in the local area drop me a PM, i have found the local astronomy society to be more talk than action...i know how to use my 10" dob, but AP will be a massive step-up

Cheers!

[baggywrinkle]

You can do some realy nice work with a tripod.

When doing widefield I have used a nice low setting such as 35-40mm, used ISO1600 and up to 30 sec exposures. All that needs to be done in manual mode.

[Ags]

If you get an programmable shutter release you can also do star trails.

[Digz]

Definitely do star trails. I have the same camera and a D200 and have some decent results.

With star trails I would try ISO800 and start at 60s exposures (will need an Intervolometer) which can be stacked using something like startrails.

[Ags]

Depends on the light pollution, I would go for ISO400 and 30secs where I live. It means more pictures to stack but the background is darker. (With startrails you don't go deeper with longer exposures of course, as the stars are drifting, you only go deeper on the light pollution).

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i go to a hill between cov and rugby, its 2-3 miles from the nearest village and about 10 miles from the city, the light pollution is worst to the east and to the west, but north and south are fine, i would estimate naked eye limiting mag to be 5-5.5 depending on atmospheric conditions...its pretty dark once you go there. its also on a "hill"...well its about 105m above sea level, which is a hill around here, and gives a 360 degree uninterrupted view...i've yet to find something better in my local area.

using a few of the calculators, if i dont want star trails, at 18mm focal length im looking at 6-10 seconds, at 60mm im looking at around 2-3 seconds, and at 105mm im looking at about 1-2 seconds. the camera seems to take good "noise-less" pictures up to ISO3200, some noise creeps in at ISO6400. ive turned off all the noise reduction options, im not 100% sure what to set the white balance to, so its currently on Auto1.

a few sites ive looked at suggest setting the aperture slightly smaller than the camera can use, for instance if the lens at 18mm focal length can use a max of f3.2, then it can be wise to set it slightly narrower, say f3.5? any truth to this, or should i just open it and gather as much light as possible?

[Ags]

It really depends on the lens and the picture. If the corners aren't important in the picture, who cares if they are a bit fuzzy? Conversely, if there is important detail to the edges, you need to stop down a little.