Camera suggestions

[reefman77]

I need a good quality camera for the following porposes

Fishtank macro

astrophotography/long exposure

lightning photography

atleast 5.0 megapixles

are there any cameras out there that work well for these purposes under $500.

 

[astrogazer]

You don't really want to use a digital camera for astrophotography, the longer a CCD or CMOS chip is 'on' the more it heats up, after about 5 seconds the 'noise' that is generated by this heat becomes prominent, after 30 seconds it's overwhelming. The only way to use a digital chip for true long exposures is to 'stack' many (dozens to hundreds) images. For the other applications, although not a dslr, the fuji finepix s9000 gets my vote for the money. You'll get images right out of the box that can be astounding, including very clear macros, with little or no photographic knowledge.

 

[astrogazer]

Although bear in mind, and I say this for anyone looking for a 'camera'. Look to put together an imaging system, this is the 21st century, with the advent of the digital revolution, there is a greater need and desire to control the entire process from shooting, to processing, to output. So don't under-estimate the value, to your final product, of the purchase af a quality piece of photo editing software. The standard is Adobe's Photoshop, but it's kinda pricey and has a rather steep learning curve. However it has a little brother in photoshop elements, think retail is about $100, trust me you'll be glad after you see the difference you can make in your overall image quality.

 

[wetWolger]

if you want to take asto your going to need a <1000$ body....

 

[astrogazer]

 

[astrogazer]

Was playing and accidently hit submit. <sheesh>
the above was images with a cheapie webcam with a decent telescope. The 'ol classic, you can compensate for a cheap camera with an awsome lens and get decent results. Course the image above is a result of many hours, almost 1000 single frames, stacked, registered and individually analyzed and sharpened and colored corrected. It's not a Hubble image, but the price tag is a few billion lighter.

 

[astrogazer]

Since you were talking astro photography here's another:

Note the dot on the planets surface, it's the shadow of the moon Io as it transits the front face of Jupiter.

 

[astrogazer]

Or you can get creative and combine image sets to simulate apparent motion.

 

[astrogazer]

here's a DSLR psuedo macro (shot with kit 18-70 lens)

Helps to have a 'ham' for a subject.

This is from my upcomming reef sunset collection

 

[wetWolger]

wow those asto pics are pretty amazing...but even with them you can see there is a high level of noise....and I can't beleave the background exposed that dark...plus the image is rather tiny

I am not trying to put you down, those images are sweet. Just saying that they still are not amazing quality.

 

[astrogazer]

Remember it is after all a web cam with a tiny CCD, that images in 320 x 240 at 72 DPI, in an interlaced fashion and the subject (saturn) is rather far away from the imager, it is only a pinprick in the night sky, a bright pinprick but a pinprick nonetheless

 

[reefman77]

Very cool Astrophotography. right now I have a decent quality telescope but I need to buy some better lenses for it. When I get some money Im going to buy meades CCD imager for my tellascope.

I downloaded a 30 day free trial of photoshop elements from adobe.com. it helps alot.

W/O photoshop

photoshop

 

[reefman77]

W/O photoshop

W/ photoshop

 

[astrogazer]

people tend to concentrate on the camera, but you must rember the entire system. Processing the images can require as much expertise as taking the image