Astro imaging with film back in the day?

[7170]

Hi, I'm interested to know if anyone used to do imaging with film (or perhaps still does)?

Somewhere I have lots of wide field images taken with a Canon A-1 (on a home made barn door tracker), and though a six inch reflector from the 1990s that I just can't find the negatives or contact sheets for anywhere.

I had a darkroom at the time and made contact sheets of the images but enlarged very few frames, and have memories of it being a frustrating exercise - mainly from trying to keep the main scope on target through the small finder scope with manual controls. Made worse by the fact I was using (I think) Ilford FP4+ film and normal processing, and not a specific process to increase speed.

This has got my mind wondering if others did much film based astro imaging back in the day or not. I guess I've been hit by nostalgia today!

[tomato]

Hi James, I was a keen emulsion film astrophotographer back in the late 80's, for me  it was largely an exercise in frustration. I used slide film almost exclusively, so I could develop the film in my kitchen to get quick feedback (almost always disappointing) on my night's imaging. 

I did an online talk on Stargazine contrasting the trials and tribulations of that era with what can be achieved with current digital astro cameras. A lot of folks think present day imaging is frustrating and fraught with problems, but it's nowt compared to using film back then, (cue Monty Python Yorkshire blokes sketch).

If you PM @Grant, I think he can send you the link to the video.

Steve

[rl]

I did a whole bunch of astrophotography with Ektachrome over a 12-year period from 1985 - 1997. By chance I came across the original edition of Michael Covington's book "Astrophotography for the Amateur " in a bookshop in Muscat, Oman which got me hooked on the AP side of things.  I used to do my own E6 processing in the bath ..used to love the excitement as the wet film came out of the tank...it would be milky for about an hour until it dried hard...revealing the results of the night's labours. Manual guiding was a real chore...keeping the crosshairs on the star for a 20-minute exposure was a real test of endurance on a cold night.

My job took me to several of the world's best observatories at the time. I made a clock drive that would work in either hemisphere so I could take shots  with a 50mm lens in Chile and South Africa. I'm inspired to sort through the detritus of my astronomy life and find a few of those slides...

[Astroscot2]

I used 35mm film for a while, think it was with an Olympus OM2N camera which was excellent as were the lenses, I upgraded to a Mamiya 6 x 4.5 and got some decent results considering I would only image around a new moon and take my kit to darker skies, using film from home was pointless.  Ive attached an example , only one I can find at hand, This was approx 25 mins manually guided by eye, yes the ol peepers.   Telescope was a Vixen 108 DED.

 

Mark

Edited October 27, 2021 by Astroscot2

[7170]

Wow @Astroscot2, Mark that is a great image, and you would have got a massive high five from me for manually guiding for 25 minutes!!

It sounds like many of us had similar experiences - a lot of perseverance;  guiding = cold and a bit of a chore; B&W or E6 processing tanks in the sink, with the excitement (or not) of what the images will turn out like when you take the reel out of the tank and it dries. 

I still have my Patterson tank, and at times I'm tempted to fix the A-1 onto the scope and see what results would be like using the OAG/CCD to automatically guide. But the cost of film (£15 plus for a single role of 35mm slide film - wow!) and chemicals (which don't seem to be readily available in small quantities) now is enough to make me think twice about dabbling for fun when I think back to what success rate I used to have with images.

@tomato your absolutely right, it is so easy to get down with frustrations of imaging today but as you say its nothing compared to using film! I'm also amazed how great an image you get from a CCD or CMOS with the gain turn up. Just thinking about my DSLR and wide field images, putting the canon up to 1600 ISO still gets great images compared to pushing a fast film several stops up to 1600 ISO in the old days. 

I've still not managed to find my negatives, I'm now beginning to wonder if the are a casualty of one of the boss's clearing out sessions. If anyone else has any scans I would love to see the results. There must be lots of amateur images of Halley's Comet from 1986 or Hale–Bopp from 1997 for example.

[fate187]

Back than people were guiding manually. Now that's the challenge: staying behind the eyepiece and doing adjustments to keep the star centered, for hours. Wow 😵

[tomato]

I used a 8” F4 Schmidt Newtonian for AP back in the 80’s, which I still have, although it is very poor condition. The silicon sealant used to glue the secondary to the holder degraded over time causing the mirror to fall off and hit the primary.🥴 It was an absolute nightmare to collimate, I don’t think I ever got it properly accurate with those primitive adjustment screws.

I might still restore it and see what it could do with a modern Astro camera on it.

Note the attached F8 Newtonian manual guidescope, happy days!

 

[BCN_Sean]

An Olympus OM10 with a 50mm on a hand cranked barn door was my first foray back in the early 90's; with not having any processing capability at home, and waiting on the local lab the whole feedback loop was 7 - 10 days, now it's a handful of seconds.  That's the type of nostalgia I really don't fancy revisiting!

[Swoop1]

Not got wet film AP experience but this thread has taken me back to my time using the dark room at BFPO 804 in the 80's. I love the smell of dev and fix chemicals and the anticipation....

[Tim]

1 minute ago, Swoop1 said:

....this thread has taken me back to my time using the dark room at BFPO 804 in the 80's. I love the smell of dev and fix chemicals and the anticipation....

Yes, me too. I haven't been in a dark room for over 30 years, but can remember the smell of the chemicals for B&W processing like it was yesterday.  It was in school that I learned to load my own film cassettes in total darkness, taking the specified amount from a larger roll, taping the new film onto the reel, winding it in, the right way round, before packing everything away in light proof cases before putting the lights back on. I didn't realise it then, but those procedures in complete darkness were setting me up well for astronomy in the future

[philj]

Tge first camera I used back in the day was a Zenit B. A rather weighty camera for my Tasco 10te refractir I had at the time, took some balancing that did. Lunar with fp4 and tentative dso with tri X it turned out reasonable results for me at the time. I remember hand guiding for 5 minutes once, literally a pain in the neck. 

[Seelive]

Hypersensitived Kodak Technical Pan seemed to be the in-vogue emulsion when I used film but I never had the facilities to hypersensitive it so Tri-X or HP4 with push processing or one of the 'new' 1600 ASA colour slide emulsions together with manual off-axis guiding for what seemed like forever! (Well at least 10 minutes). Oh, it's so easy these days 😆.

[Paul M]

I too had that Michael Covington book but i was woefully ill equipped to image through my Fullerscopes 6.25 Newt in the mid 80's. I did buy a roll of Hypered Tec pan 2415 film which I found unexposed in my father's freezer decades later.

I did get some very average colour transparencies of the moon at the prime focus of my scope but nothing more.

I enjoyed processing transparencies. It made me feel like a proper photographer

[jacko61]

I started out in astrophotography in the late 90's on 35mm, initially with a Pentax MX then later a Canon SLR (can't remember the number - maybe 250). Only really had any luck photographing the moon through a 10 inch Meade Schmidt newtonian using the camera's own light meter. I didn't read anything on the subject and the internet was nowhere near as informative back then so I really had no idea what I was doing or how to get long exposures.  Like Sean from Barcelona above, I don't hanker for the old days

Graeme 

[Peter Withey]

I have fond memories as a schoolboy in the 1970's,  trying to image the moon through my 3.5 inch Tasco Newtonian Reflector (yes 3.5 inch Newt) with a Pentax K1000 SLR. I never understood why it wouldnt focus with the camera lens removed and using the telescope as the lens ( I didnt now about lack of infocus in Newts). I was thrilled when I managed to get some blurry crater pictures , effectively using eyepiece projection - though i didnt know what i was doing. Of course there were no connectors or adaptors to connect scope and camera - which  made the whole thing even more hit and miss!  We are so spoilt nowadays