Bought a Canon 350D

[Adam Isa]

Hello all. Decided on buying a Canon EOS 350D to do some astrophotography. May not be the best camera to use but that's life. Also wanted a decent camera for everyday use. Anyway, I suppose you know what's coming next:

What will I need to attach it to my Dobsonian? It is a 300P Skywatcher.

Secondly, to get the most out of the night sky, what settings are going to be best? E.g., white balance, ISO aperture etc.

[Psychobilly]

Nowt wrong with the 350D nice big pixels...

What are you hoping to image through the dob with the DSLR...

You havent picked the easiest type of scope to image through...

Peter...

[Adam Isa]

Haha, I know Peter. I think DSO's are out of the question for the time being. Would like to get some nice snaps of the moon and planets. Perhaps a few stars as well. I'm certainly not expecting anything like this!

[Psychobilly]

Capturing video with a Webcam and processing it in registax would give you far better results than using the DSLR....

Thats not saying that the DSLR is useless... just "challenging".... the good thing about "digital" is you can try as many things as you like and get pretty instant feedback... dont rely on the tiny lcd on the back of the 350D for checking though if you do remember to zoom in to the images ...

Peter...

[Adam Isa]

How come a little webcam will produce better results than a dedicated DSLR?

[Pete Presland]

thousands of frames stacked

[Pete Presland]

i also have bought the same dslr as you

but i wont be using it for planetary or lunar imaging as the webcam is far better and easier

the dslr will be for wide view and deep sky stuff if i ever get a mount to track for my 10" orion i will have a go with the etx though even though alt-azimuth mount is not the best for it

[Adam Isa]

Ah, I see. So if you are wanting to image planets and the moon etc, you're better of having a webcam and DSO it's a DSLR? I suppose the next question then is what webcam?

[Psychobilly]

Philips Toucam 840K? Or SPC900 both getting pretty rare/pricey these day although Microsoft Lifecam HD is a current fav but as yet no quite as "tweakable" as the older Philps cams...

Peter...

[Pete Presland]

the two above cams are the ones to have, but the logitech quickcam is a ccd cam and would be a cheaper start.

thats what i used first to make a start,just to see if imaging was what i wanted to do.

the Philips Toucam 840K? Or SPC900 are just so expensive even 2nd hand i saw a toucam go for £105 just after xmas

its very addictive when you start

[Adam Isa]

I know. I thought I'd buy a cheap telescope and before I know it, the cost is spiralling out of control with mounts, GOTO, eyepieces, dewshields, cameras, software and on and on and...

[Glider]

The webcam will capture several 10's of frames(images) per second, so the chances of you getting the magic moment when the atmosphere and hence the 'seeing' was good are improved. Capture at 15 frames per second for 90s and you get a lot of potentially good frames to stack togther to get a good overall image in something like Registax.

I say 90s because depending on your target(Jupiter) it will rotate and smear your image anyway. 15f/s because if you try and go faster on some camera they have to compress data to shift it over USB and hence loose quality.

Just a few pointers, Google to learn more as I've massively generalised things but the basics are there.