Dear all,
A bit more about this astrophotography lark: first off, someone said to stop
down your lens for best performance. Very true, but if you just want to get
a lot of stars you definitely need your lens wide open. If you look at my
milky way shot you can see that there's uneven illumination and the stars at
the edges are definitely not spherical, but I'd much rather have that than
eliminate the aberrations and have less stars. And someone said the finer
the grain the better. True again, but to take full advantage of fine grain
you need to track the stars and expose for a long time. Without tracking,
fast film is the way to go.
Chris, you wondered if two-hour exposures wouldn't totally wash out - well,
if you use fast film they will do (I tried one once on 1600 film - that
might as well have been daylight and the moon wasn't even out!), but I've
had great results on Fuji Sensia 100 - for example
http://www.worldtraveller.f9.co.uk/travel/ohp/2001/photos/trails1.jpg. In
fact, this is probably the easiest way of getting satisfying star shots -
you can leave the shutter open while you sit inside with a cup of coffee.
(Or, you can justify all those OM bodies you have by leaving one on star
trails while another is doing some short exposures!)
Another couple of links you might be interested in - someone mentioned the
Aurorae Borealis: now is the peak of the 11-year solar cycle so they're
happening quite frequently. You can get the latest info and display
predictions at
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Also, if you want to get really into astrophotography, the Astrophotography
Mailing List can be found at http://www.system.missouri.edu/apml/. You'd
all feel right at home there, there's a major flame war happening right now,
actually...:) Most people on the list are pretty advanced but there's
generally help around for beginners as well.
And if you want to be inspired by the wonders of the universe on a daily
basis, have a look at http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod .
You know, I bought my original OM-1 purely to have a go at astrophotography.
Who'd have thought that I'd be sitting here 4 years later with three bodies,
9 lenses, various teleconverters and adapters, filters, and a box of some
5000 photographs...very few of which are actually astronomical! Damn this
zuikoholism...
Roger
PS Did anyone have any luck with the Perseids? It was cloudy as usual here
in London.
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