Hello!

     I have just recieved a 35mm Canon EF and I would like to use it for astrophotography and I would like to know if this is a good camera to use and what sort of film should I use with this camera.

Much Thanks!

 

Yes you can! if you want to do prime focus photography you will need a T-ring/T-adapter so that you can attach the camera to the telescope.

The best films are generally slide films such as Fuji Provia or Kodak Ekrome. Print films will work but do not capture the depth of color that print films will.

What kind of telescope and mount are you using?

 

Have A Nice _________ 

Thank you for the help and the advice. In the way of telescope, sadly I don't own one and as for a mount for the camera I have a very sturdy tripod and a barn-door mount (my funds are scarce  ). Well, it all works out in the end. I'm going to an island in Greece in June, where there is basically no light pollution.

Thank you again! I really do apreciate it!

Honestly speaking,having a camera for astrophotography is a bit useless.

Why dont you get yourself one?We could help you choose depending what kind you want.And what would be your budget?(even though your money is scarce)

Doing astrophotography will make you eagerly want to get one.But dont get department stores or whatever non-telescope shops telescopes,these are just crap junks that wastes your money.

     I agree fully with you!  I would absolutely *love* a telescope, but right now I really cannot afford it.  I am in high school and this is a hobby that I want to do independent of my parents, financially.  If I could afford it, I would get an 8-inch Dobs-Newtonian for a starter telescope.  I know it is not something you would use for astrophotography, but it is in the price range of $300 to $500, which is an amount I can realistically reach on my own.

Thanks for taking interest.

Astrophotography is not only done through the telescope. Like Tkerr wrote the slide films are best but if you need to buy more equipment to view the slides then you can use Fuji 800 print film instead. IMHO it is one of the better print films. What is your lens size? I will see if I can find a couple of links for you to view some more information on the subject.

IMHO-In my humble opinion

Edit: I ran a search on Barndoor Astrophotography and came back with a bunch of results, here are a couple.

http://www.eskimo.com/~rachford/widefield/widefield.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/8102/

Here is a link to a very good starting book.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/astro/

Another very good site.

http://www.allaboutastro.com/

     Thank you for the advice and the links, they were helpful and encouraging!  I was just getting a wee bit discouraged by my lack of a telescope.  The camera that I have it came with a 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 128 mm lenses but I only plan to use the 35mm and the 50mm for now.

Thank you!

The lenses will work fine. I do not which model of camera you have but as you probably know that the camera needs to have a manual bulb setting for long exposure and a shutter release cable or remote. Start with exposure of 15 minutes and go from there. If your first attempts fail then correct your mistakes and try again.

This one is a 70mm (28-70 zoom) pic of the milky way.

This one is a 135mm pic of Orion. It is a cropped image from the original.

Both are the piggyback method.

Crapping images but show you what you can achieve. Both are 15 minute exposure.

Thank you so much GaryB, tkerr, and Dark Neptune for your attention to my question.  I really do apreciate all of the advice and the time all of you put in to my question.

Thank you so much!

Stephanie

Dobsonians are not recommended for astrophotography.Maybe you could get a 5/6 inch Schimdt-Cassegrain from Celestron,or refractors that are Apochromatic,with sharp images but the only problem is that these sharp images comes with a cost:They are expensive,and the largest avaliable to be purchased by the public are 7 inches.

 

You are correct that large apochromats can be expensive (and, of course, "expensive" is relative, so even a 90mm apochromat would give some amateurs sticker shock).

But you are not correct about the largest size available for public purchase. Last I checked, Markus Ludes at APM Telescopes in Germany had one larger than 20" for sale.

There are several available in the range of 190mm (e.g, the Stellarvue 190), though these normally are built-to-order and not off-the-shelf.

APM has offered 8" and 9" apochromats for sale for many years. 3RF has had one of the APM/TMB 8" apos for several years.

Oh,I am sorry.Maybe I was reading an outdated telescope book that time....

If you are imaging with film, you will want a very short focal ratio scope, f/5 about as slow as I would go. Any exposure at f/6 will take twice as long as f/5. Peter Kennett www.PetesAstrophotography.com

aside from the good advice above, im gonna tell ya the downside- be prepared for roll after roll of frustrations, by the time you get focus and exposure 'decent' for a given target- you may already have had numerous trips to the developer, print films work ok as long as get one suits your object- some do better on nebs- others on clusters and galaxys- another issue will be your tracking and lens f/l, to high a f/l with poor tracking will also ruin the image- the only way to find out is another trip to the developer- it gets to the point where film AP doesnt come cheap- if you do get something worthwhile- it usually requires scanned and then post-processing, most consumer photolabs just dont know what to do with astrophotos, nor are they equipped to process them- your gonna need a shutter release cable of some type for bulb mode

After years of film astrophotography, and all the frustrations that were just described, I have a few comments. All my years of experience taught me one major thing. When NOT to press the shutter button. If I had ANY doubt about focus or if my Polar Alignment was off by a hair I never start the exposure. I guide my photos by hand with a separate guide-scope. I can SEE immediately if there is the slightest tracking error in Declination (polar mis-alignment) and would go back and drift align until the DEC movement stopped. Knowing when NOT to expose is KEY to film astrophotography, or you will indeed waste a lot of money. On any given night, I only take about 4 shots. But of them, 3 are worth printing. All of the astrophotos on my website come from 4 rolls of film.

I have yet to see someone with the SAME astrophotographer with SAME digital camera after 5 years. Once a person buys a new CCD camera all cost savings over film goes out the window. I am still imaging with my camera I bought in 1979.

I use film as an astrophotography medium because there is NO higher resolution color imaging platform, with the same field of view, at the same cost. Take a look at the film images by Jason Ware or Wei-Hao Wang:

http://www.galaxyphoto.com/jw_new_12_m31.htmhttp://www.galaxyphoto.com/jw_new_rho_meade12.htm http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~whwang/gallery/picutres/m8_m20-2006.htm http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~whwang/gallery/picutres/wholeSky-summer.html http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~whwang/gallery/picutres/sco_sgi_milkyway.htm

These will show you what film can do. I am not saying film is perfect, should be used for all imaging needs. It isn't. I would never shoot planetary astrophotography with film. A cheap webcam will blow it away!

The best advice.. be very patient, get very accurate Polar Alignment, use a focusing tool (like an STI Stiletto), and have FUN!

Peter Kennett
www.PetesAstrophotography.com

i dunno, i really hate to steer someone in the way of film these days, unless you have your own darkroom, it wont long before everything is obsolete- other issues are 1 flicker of light and the 20 exposure is wasted, with a DSLR you just delete it and lost 3 minutes, im not so sure about the color depth anymore, these new breeds of DSLR most certaily outperform film, im a member of a photo forum and receive photo mags to keep up with lastest developements- they all start to rate film as a back seat anymore- other things are with these new film cams are the electronic shutter, that gets bad when you gotta change a battery and start all over again- i use (used) a pentax ME that i thought was superb at the time (along with the OM1 series)- but my pentax used a shutter cable and the split image prism has a small outer grid screen on it- i could use this for focus being it 'spiked' the stars, actually my best shot ever of orion was with film- but then again i never tried it with my IR modded DRSL yet- i never could get the horsehead with film here- guess the LP just didnt cut it, but 4 minutes with digital, and im looking at Mr ED 30 seconds later! heres an interesting link comparing slide films- with a CCD at the end

http://www.mistisoftware.com/astronomy/FilmComparison.htm

No question digital has a lot of advantages. My point was based on cost. A $50 used OM1 and $7 roll of Kodak E200 can produce wall posters suitable for a museum. About film going away... not even by a long shot. As a diplomat I travel and live all over the world. With the exception of a handful of rich countries, just every other place in the world is dominated by cheap disposable film cameras. In many place I have lived you can't find a store that sells digital cameras. What may be a problem though, is the continued production of film that is most suitable for astrophotography. Today we have Fujichrome Provia / Sensia and Kodak Elite Chrome 200 - which have low reciprocity failure and captures Ha light very well. As soon as those two emulsions go away, finding a suitable replacement may be hard. Certainly no film company is going to consider the needs of a few astrophotographers when changing emulsion sensitivity! Peter