About to take my first picture!

[John MK]

Hi all,

 

Tomorrow night I'm going out to take a few pictures with my uncle and his camera (Canon eos 750d) and I've just bought a T ring to fit my Meade Polaris 114 telescope (http://www.meade.com/polaris-114mm-german-equatorial-reflector.html)

I know it's a manual mount and I know I can't take long exposures. So We're going to practice with 1 second photo's. Just wondering if anyone could help with what settings we'll need to use in order to get a good picture of the moon? As we can't take pictures of anything else with great detail!

 

Any Information would be a great help!

 

Regards

 

John

[alacant]

Hi. If you can reach focus, try starting with 1/250s ISO 200. HTH

[Bonnylad]

Welcome, John.

The moon doesn't start rising until the middle of the night, and then it's about into its last quarter before a new moon.

[alacant]

4 hours ago, Bonnylad said:

middle of the night, and then it's about into its last quarter

Exactly. Perfect.

[Ruud]

Hi John, I hope you enjoy your exploits in photography. Lots of helpful experts here!

[hjw]

10 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi. If you can reach focus, try starting with 1/250s ISO 200. HTH

I would second those settings. Would have suggested 1/200s, but hey. What I would like to add is if you can do remote release it will help. 1/250s sound quick, but through a telescope any shaking from depressing the release button is bad. Also take quite a few shots (let's say 40 or so) and stack them with Registax (free software). Playing with the wavelets will improve the image enormously.

Good luck!

HJ

 

[The Admiral]

Welcome John. The Moon is so bright that you can treat it as though you would any terrestrial photograph, and probably allow the camera to assess the exposure. However, as others have said, you need to keep the exposures short to minimize the effects of vibration and atmospheric motion. Adjust the ISO upwards until you get shorter than, say, 1/250th second. If you view the Moon through the 'scope you will see that its edges shimmer or ripple due to this atmospheric motion, so a high shutter speed will minimize its effect on the image. I use the edges of the Moon or some prominent feature to focus on, and that may need some practise. Use a remote release, or use the time delay function on your camera. Better still, take lots of frames and stack them together using freely available software. I use Autostakkert.

Good luck! Ian

[alacant]

5 hours ago, hjw said:

take quite a few shots

Ah yeah. I've never done it but don't the moon and planet guys take a video to get the frames? Cheers.

[The Admiral]

49 minutes ago, alacant said:

Ah yeah. I've never done it but don't the moon and planet guys take a video to get the frames? Cheers.

I've never used video either, but I think for a first attempt, stick to single frames. DSLRs create video files in a variety of formats, some better than others I believe, and then there's the potential difficulty of getting your stacking software to recognize them. My only attempt led to failure! So now I just run off a sequence of frames using the camera's 'continuous' shooting mode until the buffer is full, then repeat when that's cleared.

Oh, nearly forgot, focus using magnified live-view, and I'd suggest you also lock the mirror up to minimize vibration.

Ian

[RSM]

Hi, would echo the comments of others to go for as short an exposure length as possible to get as sharp as possible an image. I generally have not gone beyond ISO400. If you don't have an intervalometer, you could use the timer function to reduce wobble. Like others have suggested, use live view zoomed function to get a good focus (I try to focus on the craters at the terminator) and if you can take lots of shots (more the better) and have a go at stacking. I take images as hi res Jpegs which seems to work for me. 

Good luck. 

Richard

[hjw]

On 9/25/2016 at 19:08, alacant said:

Ah yeah. I've never done it but don't the moon and planet guys take a video to get the frames? Cheers.

In a DSLR the video mode reduces the resolution to ~2 Megapixel (1920x1080) while still frames on my camera have 16MP. Makes a big difference in the final image. To be honest I never had a thought of using the DSLR in video mode. I have a little camcorder with some ridiculous optical zoom which gives quite passable results without a telescope.

Clear skies

HJ