Astrophotograhy?

[chung]

Theres thread at the Canon forum on using the S2 to do astro photoghraphy. Does anyone know if we can use the FZ5 and do the same?

[Max_Pain]

im an amateur astronomer myself and have been badly wanting to do astrophotography but with my cameras(Canon PowerShot A75, FZ20) its very hard because both lack long exposures. good astrophotography pictures have exposures of 25 minutes or so. if the FZ5 is like the FZ20, the max you'll get is 8 seconds. that means you would need a motorized equatorial mount for the telescope you're using, then take around 150 pictures at 8". then using something like Registax you can stack the pictures and more or less get something usable. but then again, its impossible to take 150 8" pictures consecutively because it takes a while to write to the card(and that's using an Ultra II card)

short story, I dont think its very pratical to do with the Lumix cameras. however, if i'm wrong please correct me because i would like to do it myself!

[tswill2]

I've taken handheld photos of the moon with my FZ20 at 12X zoom, and gotten fairly good results. So have others. A search of the dpreview Panasonic Talk forum for moon should bring up several. Mine can be seen at - http://tswill2.smugmug.com/gallery/316972/1/19260253of the sun, and http://tswill2.smugmug.com/gallery/291050/1/18289361of the moon, and http://tswill2.smugmug.com/for general browsing.

Do a websearch of digiscoping for some leads, and think about getting something from Meade or equiv. Good luck and deep pockets. Tom

[tswill2]

http://tswill2.smugmug.com/gallery/339849/1/13516820taken with a Nikon 990 which is recommended for coupling to a eyepiece due to lens dia. There is a good resource at http://digiscopingukbirds.homestead.com/and more at http://www.birdforum.net/forumdispla...d1c0&f=111 Tom

[chung]

well was wonderign if there was a way to attach the cam with a adaptor to the the eyepiece. I have a Meade ETX. I guess with 8sec I am not aiming for deep space objects just planets and maybe double stars, brighter clusters etc ie pleieades, M42??

I have taken direct moon shots off the eyepiece with holding my old Lumix LC20 at Macro mode, not that clear but nice enough to make out craters etc.

[Gospel]

When researching an astrophotography related question for someone else last month, I came across a free image stacking program called Registax. I don't know how good it is but it has lots of features like auto image rotaion, auto allignment, etc. It can be fount at:

http://registax.astronomy.net/

As you probably know, image stacking/merging is used to increase the brightness of a phto or to increase the dynamic range.

Hope this helps,
Steven

[kklaus]

Just shot the moon with FZ20.

Focus manual

M-Mode 1/125 f/4,6

Iso 200 (little bit better then ISO 80 /100 IMHO)

12x Zoom, just a little, little, little bit sharpened

Tripod Manfrotto with 141 RC

[kklaus]

same Moon with P-Mode and 1x Zoom

[chung]

Moon shot with FZ5 at 48x digital zoom, handheld restignon car roof with IS mode2

[sprocket87]

chung wrote:

well was wonderign if there was a way to attach the cam with a adaptor to the the eyepiece. I have a Meade ETX. I guess with 8sec I am not aiming for deep space objects just planets and maybe double stars, brighter clusters etc ie pleieades, M42??

I have taken direct moon shots off the eyepiece with holding my old Lumix LC20 at Macro mode, not that clear but nice enough to make out craters etc.

WOW, that shot is really impressive, in my opinion anyway. All you did was hold the FZ20 up to the eyepiece of the Meade ETX and do a macro shot?? That's a better result than I would have expected. Now I want a stinking telescope, lol!!