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Bridge camera

popeye85

By popeye85
in Getting Started With Imaging

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

Posted
Posted

Your probably going to be looking at doing afocal photography where use the bridge camera with it's fixed lens  to take an image through an eyepiece. Also have a look under Digiscoping  - a term usually applied to terrestrial photography but essentially the same thing.

Have a look at this wikipedia entry for starters...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afocal_photography

http://www.digiscoping.co.uk/

Peter...

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Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

Posted
Posted

Technique:

Start off zoomed out and manual focus at infinity, then zoom in on your target using a tripod. Refocus

Use a high ISO rating (except for Venus) and experiment with the manual shutter speed until you get good (acceptable) results.

Use the self timer to take photos without vibration.

Get lots of frames and stack using PIPP and autostakkert or registax.

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Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

Posted
Posted

Thanks for the tips! Any more advice would be much apreciated!

I started taking pictures with my bridge camera, not rally expecting anything, really. I was getting good pictures of the moon and on holiday in Skye I discovered that it was sensitive enough to pick up the brighter stars. I was enthused and bought the top of teh range Canon bridge which had full manual control (although no bulb mode, and limited to 8 secs at ISO 100 and 1 secs at ISO 6400).

The Canon P520 has a 1000mm equivalent optical zoom (I think yours is about 700mm?) and I discovered that it would register Jupiter as a disk, rather than a dot. I could even see three bright dots that could have been jupiter's moons, but I guessed they were some sort of flare. The next day the dots were on the other side of jupiter, so I went on line and they were where the moons were suppose to be!

I did some exploring and found out about stacking programs.  When I used a tripod and a longer exposure, jupiter became a brownish disk, instead of a white one.

I stacked about 20-30 shots of jupiter instead of simply a brownish disk, I got a disk with two brownish stripes. That got me totally hooked and I started photographing other objects and being really thrilled by any result that was remotely recognisable. It was very good at constellations, as actually losing the dimmer stars makes the actual constellation stand out.

Then one day I decided to try and photograph Saturn. I was expecting to get the 'binocular view' where it looks like a rugby ball. I zoomed in on my very first picture, and couldn't believe it - it looked like a 'theta'. Stacking the best Saturns from a whole run gave a passable image that was clearly a planet with a ring round it!

From there on I have ended up getting a scope, a bigger scope, a webcam and now a cheap old canon DSLR (£30!) which I have 'astro modded'.

Every time I look at my own pictures I am amazed by them and proud of them! They are not as good as some of the pics you will see on this site or elsewhere, but they stand up against pictures in textbooks published before the 'digital revolution'. I started with low expectations - just capturing a planet or constellation was enough for me. I discovered the bridge camera can see as much as or more than Galileo, and then that with a few hundred quid's worth of gear I can take pictures that I thought were only possible from space or with a massive observatory. This website has been hugely helpful as a source of inspiration and advice.

I found that the Bridge Camera was enough to keep me going for over a year, you may not last as long, but don't feel you need to spend a fortune, just ghradually upgrade and your options will widen as you go.

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Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

Posted
Posted

DSS for anything with a starry background.

For moon/planets I use PIPP to cut out the area of interest and centre the target then stack in registax or autostakkert!2

I must be honest, I still haven't quite worked out how registax works, sometimes it does a great job, sometimes it creates a total blur - I have never been able to feel in control of the alignment process in the same way as I do with AS!2.

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