Buying a Camera

[BeckieA]

Hello everyone, 

I have already purchased a Celestron Nexstar 4se telescopes and I am now looking to start Astrophotography. I have been recommending the Olympus OMD em10 mark II, I wanted your thoughts on it and whether it is a good camera for beginner Astrophotography? 

 

Thanks 

[Chris]

Hi, your telescope is only really suitable for planetary and lunar imaging as it's alt/az mounted and has a slow focal ratio and lots of focal length. So this is what you should concentrate on imaging wise with that particular scope.

 Most people use astro webcams for imaging the planets and moon, you just plug it into your scope and connect it too your laptop via the usb cable and use something like Sharpcap (free to down load) to capture an AVI file, and registax (free to down load) to stack the AVI into a single clearer image.

Here is an example of one of these planetary cameras:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-cameras/zwo-asi120mc-s-usb-3-colour-camera.html

The Olympus is a nice compact-ish mirror less interchangeable lens camera great for daytime pics but most people use Canon DLSR's for deep sky imaging as there is lots of software support and mods for these cameras, such as removing the IR block filter to increase their sensitivity to nebulae. 

I'm not sure how good the Olympus would be for planetary lunar imaging which is your scopes strength?  

 

[BeckieA]

Thankyou,

this is really helpful!

do you think I would be able to use just the Olympus camera to take pictures of say The Milky Way or star trails?

 

[happy-kat]

Hi

Were any reasons given for recommending the Olympus?

[JamesF]

You should surely be able to do that.  An intervalometer may be helpful.  If you don't have the camera yet though, is there some specific reason you want that one?  I'd agree with Chris's comments regarding the support for Canon cameras.  Is there some particular reason you're interested in the Olympus?

You can also use a DSLR with your telescope for imaging the Moon and, given a suitable white light filter, the Sun.

James

[happy-kat]

If you are interested there is this long running thread on imaging with an altaz mount, such as yours.

link here

Your mount moves in tiny left right up down movements and as such whilst tracking the object and keeping it in the field of view it does not account for the Earth's rotation and it is this that limits exposure length. Your telescope long focal length puts extra demands on the mount and shows up field rotation and mount inaccuracies earlier. If you used instead a camera and lens you may find your exposure length could climb from the range of 5 -10 seconds to around 30-45.

I image with a similar moving mount as that is what I have an enjoy it and what I can achieve from it.

[Adam J]

On 02/08/2018 at 15:29, BeckieA said:

Hello everyone, 

I have already purchased a Celestron Nexstar 4se telescopes and I am now looking to start Astrophotography. I have been recommending the Olympus OMD em10 mark II, I wanted your thoughts on it and whether it is a good camera for beginner Astrophotography? 

 

Thanks 

No I would not get an olympus for astrophotography. It will lack software support.

What is your budget and I can suggest something better?

[Stu Todd]

On 03/08/2018 at 03:39, BeckieA said:

Thankyou,

this is really helpful!

do you think I would be able to use just the Olympus camera to take pictures of say The Milky Way or star trails?

 

For the cost of the Olympus, you should be able to buy a ZWO 224 or even a 290 and take great planet/moon videos and stack them with Autostakkert. (That's how great planet images are done). 

Milky Way and star trails pictures are done with a DSLR on a tripod and remote shutter release cable, no scope involved. As mentioned above, a Canon is a far better bet than the Olympus.