Getting started

[Comacchio]

Hello,

It's my third wedding anniversary soon, of which the 'modern' gift is glass/crystal. I've been an amateur photographer for a good number of years now, with a keen interest in night photography and an ambition to get involved in some astrophotography. So I've been looking at telescopes to meet the glass element of the gift - we've settled on a budget of £200, but I don't mind adding a little more to this as I appreciate this is a miniscule budget when it comes to telescopes and the vastness of space!

I don't mind having to upgrade in a few years if I stick with the hobby, so ideally at present I'd stick to the £200-£300 mark. I've got a Canon EOS 550d body that I'd like to pair with a scope to take some images alongside general astronomy - with this in mind would anyone in the know be able to suggest some options for me please? Absolute beginner when it comes to telescopes, vaguely recall having a toy scope as a child, so aware it'll be a learning curve and not to expect much for a while. If the scope could be paired with a motor down the line for tracking that would be advantageous. Not sure if it helps, but I have a Redsnapper tripod for my camera that feels pretty sturdy.

Cheers.

[Cosmic Geoff]

1 hour ago, Comacchio said:

so ideally at present I'd stick to the £200-£300 mark.

That is a totally inadequate budget for most kinds of astrophotography.  ROFL. What do you want to image? How dark is the sky in your location? With your existing camera and tripod, you could perhaps try capturing constellations, or star trails.  I suggest you start by investing £20 or so in "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards, available from FLO.

[bosun21]

I would recommend that you buy a secondhand lens for your camera which would allow you to take short exposures and stack them. This would also allow you to learn about astrophotography and the workload involved in creating images of the night sky.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Unfortunately, I agree with both replies so far. Whilst many have produced perfectly good images on a budget I would think the budget is well in excess of £300.
You may look and see telescopes for around the £200-£300 mark and some may work okay for AP but the scope is only part of what you need, really you need a very steady tracking mount otherwise it can be difficult and a cheap mount will only give you issues that make a difficult hobby even harder and more than likely you will give up before you see results.

For sure I would buy the book mentioned by @Cosmic Geoff "Every Photon Counts". There is a lot more to Astrophotography than a camera and scope or lens (to be fair that is the easy part) and if I had not read this book a few years ago I would have no idea what is involved. Some of it takes a few takes by reading the book over a few times before the penny drops (well it was like that for me) but don't worry when it does you wonder why it took you so long and stays with you then.

Also you do not need a telescope to take good widefield images if you have a DSLR, a good lens and a tracking mount will suffice and a great way to start off relatively cheaply.

Just a suggestion but why not by the book mentioned above, maybe another on general astronomy and for the "glass" buy some decent binos that allow you to study the night sky and get to know it and the major stars and constellations, what is about at what time of year. I would suggest astrophotography is not something to rush into, if you do believe me you will buy stuff that although cheap astro wise still costs a fair amount of hard earned cash and you will regret it as you realise its not really the right equipment and also you may not be able to sell it on.

Read the books, learn stuff online, ask lots of questions on this forum, use your binos on clear nights and save up what you can afford. Get your posts up so you can use the 2nd hand section to buy good equipment at much lower prices than new and you will do well. That way you find that later you can upgrade and probably sell on your original gear without much loss in cash and build up a good imaging rig (in time).

Good luck in your venture 🙂 

Steve

Edited September 27, 2023 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Mandy D]

Whilst some solid advice has been given here, no-one has bothered to ask the OP what type of astrophotography they are interested in attempting and have all assumed that this means long-exposure deep-sky.

For lunar photography, any modern DSLR is good and can be combined with an inexpensive Dobsonian mounted Newtonian reflector to achieve very good to excellent results. The whole lot, camera included can be had for less than £300 secondhand. £200 gets you a very nice Skywatcher 200P and leaves £100 for a decent DSLR, such as a D3200 which would work well, but the OP already has a very suitable camera.

Basic planetary photography can also be attempted with the same setup. Solar imaging with a small further investment in the proper filters. Heck, you can even acquire basic images of some of the brighter deep-sky stuff, such as M42 without tracking mounts and cooled astro cameras. Starfields, which have been mentioned are also within easy reach of the most basic setup.

£300 will not get a decent, sturdy tripod and mount in the camera world. I have a £230 carbon fibre tripod and a £220 head. It still wobbles and I would not call it good. To overcome this sort of issue, you would need a wireless remote control system (I use Hahnel) and an understanding of how to use Muppet mode (Mup - mirror up). You also need to use liveview for focusing if this is the way you wish to go.

I will concur with the advice to get decent books on the topic ahead of attempting it. My favorite is Astrophotography by Thierry Legault.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

5 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Whilst some solid advice has been given here, no-one has bothered to ask the OP what type of astrophotography they are interested in attempting and have all assumed that this means long-exposure deep-sky.

Very good point and I did mean to ask but in all my waffling I forgot (age thing 🙂 )

Steve

[Mandy D]

2 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Very good point and I did mean to ask but in all my waffling I forgot (age thing 🙂 )

Steve

We all do it! I'm not so young now. My journey into this started with a 250PX and a Nikon D3200 and I've never looked back. Still using both and all the other kit I have bought since.

[M40]

Welcome to the site Commacchio and congrats on the anniversary 👍

As others have said, the budget will get you a starter telescope and a mobile phone mount. If this is what was in your mind, let us know as there are a number of good starter telescopes and a few to avoid, so we can help with that.

On the basis I do like to offer alternatives, how about this..... a gosky 20-60 x 80 spotting scope with BAK4 prism complete with, tripod, mobile phone mount and an adapter for a Canon camera. Its in your budget and it has the bonus of a big lump of glass at the front. As it has a traditional camera tripod fixing, you can put it on your tripod and or a tracking mount. You will get tremendous views of the moon plus you will see Jupiter as a bright dot with at least three moons. Food for thought. All the best.

[doublevodka]

I'm not going to make any assumptions here other than you have a mobile phone and give you some alternatives to at least have a look at for some basic astrophotography.

Firstly with just what you already have - https://www.galactic-hunter.com/post/deep-sky-astrophotography-with-just-a-dslr-camera-and-tripod-is-it-possible

Secondly, "night mode" is becoming very good on mobile phones, so you could add a phone mount to your tripod for less than £20

Third, "smart telescopes"

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hestia-turn-your-phone-into-a-smart-telescope#/  Very basic, uses your phones camera

https://dwarflab.com/en-gb/products/dwarf-2-smart-telescope a bit more advanced (and over budget with the basic kit at £369)

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes/zwo-seestar-s50-all-in-one-smart-apo-telescope-tripod.html substantially over budget at £569 and the new kid on the block, but the most advanced "budget" smart telescope

Now yes, many will say this is not true astrophotography, but there are some options for those on a smaller budget, and astrophotography by definition is just the use of photography in astronomy

[Comacchio]

Thanks for the advice all. I do appreciate this is a very specialised field and £300 doesn't get you much, hell, £3000 probably only just about gets you started.

The more research I do the more I'm swaying towards starting off with a star tracking mount for my current camera - in terms of glass for it I currently have:

Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM
Canon EF-S 15-88mm f3.5-5.6 IS
Canon EF 28-80mm f3.5-5.6
Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II
Canon EF-S 60mm f2.8 USM (Macro)
Canon EF 100mm f2.8L IS USM (Macro)
Canon EF-S 55-250mm f4-5.6
Canon EF 75-300mm f4-5.6 III

I'll certainly look into the suggested books also.

Cheers.

[Elp]

Tbh, just start with the 50mm on your existing tripod and see what you get. Good northern hemisphere targets coming up in autumn and winter where you can image with a fixed tripod is M45 Pleiades (though you'll struggle to get any nebulosity out of it), M31 Andromeda galaxy and M42 Orion Nebula. Open and closed start clusters you can image at short exposures too because stars are bright.

The longer focal length you use the more your stars will streak in shorter time (hence the need for a tracker). You can DIY build a barn door tracker or the cheapest capable mechanical tracker I had was an Omegon LX, but you'll also need to source an equatorial wedge (Ioptron is the best budget one, William Optics at the higher end) for it and a way to mount it (short dovetail and some sort of physical lock to stop it turning at the base mount point).

Haven't used any of your lenses but from experience the vast majority of camera lenses are no good for good whole frame astro especially at the edges which suffer massive chromatic abberation, LoCA and coma. Some good lenses I've used are the Samyang 14mm ED manual prime (for very wide field milky way shots, a bit of a struggle to use if you've got local light pollution sources as the large curved glass will pick it up, at dark sites it's great), Samyang 135mm F2 ED manual prime (one of the best pieces for astro glass ever period (even though it's not designed for it) including over many telescopes, you will get tilt issues and stuff but if you're not too picky it's great, you will need a tracking mount to use due to FL), Asahi Takumar 135mm and 200mm (great budget options, decent quality despite presenting red or green haloed stars at the focal point). Note the pattern here, they're all primes but people have managed with variable zooms.

But, I'd start with what you already have. You'll be surprised what you can image, I started with a compact camera on a fixed tripod and got great milky way shots with it.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Elp

[W0nderste]

I'd get a 2nd hand skywatcher Azgti and wedge.  You can start AP with your existing cameras/lens and then when you are ready you can get a small refractor and/or 5" Mak for DSO's or planetary.  
The AzGti is a great little mount.  Can be run in Azimuth or equatorial (with wedge) mode.  Is also portable if you need to travel for dark skies.

lots of great AP images with that mount

[bwj]

Look up SarahMathsAstro on YouTube.  She has a couple of videos about  using a DSLR on a star tracker for DSOs and on just a regular tripod for the moon. Part of what she does well is take you through the entire process, including processing the images (stacking mentioned above is part of that). She uses a free program called Siril.

Have fun, and clear skies!