Great tips! Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

Wyatt


"Davoud" wrote in message
...
WW Gordon:
I recently bought a Nikon D100 Digital SLR camera; my wife just bought a
Celestron G-8 telescope. Mating the two seems like a good idea, and
I've
seen D100 images on the 'net, but can't figure out how to set up the
camera.
I've get the T-adaptor, but since the D100 has to have a "CPU" lens for
it's
metering, it appears I lose all ability, even in manual mode, to set
things
such as aperture and exposure time. I'm sure I'm missing something
here --
can anyone offer suggestions? Thanks!

Obviously you can't set the aperture with the D100 on the G8, but you
can certainly adjust the shutter speed by setting the mode to "M" and
turning the thumb dial at the back of the camera (sorry, I don't
remember Nikon's name for the front and rear dials). Don't forget to
turn on the anti-shock feature -- the camera pauses for a moment after
the mirror flips up to let the vibration that that action might cause
die down, then it takes the exposure. Turn this back off before regular
photography, or it'll drive you nuts. You also need to use the self
timer for astrophotography.

The D100 is a great camera -- mine paid for itself in no time with
occasional commercial work. It isn't good for long-exposure
astrophotography because the chip is quite noisy. It is excellent for
lunar and planetary photography, however.

I do my lunar and planetary photography with the "hat trick." I set the
self-timer for eight seconds and I set the shutter speed for about five
seconds. While the timer is ticking down I position a piece of flat
black mounting board in front of the telescope. About two seconds after
the shutter opens (and all vibrations have ended) I move the board away
quickly, then back again -- the board serves as my shutter. This
eliminates all blur from camera vibration. You won't know what your
shutter speed is, and you'll get a number of over- or under-exposed
images for each good exposure, but digital film is cheap.

My results are at my non-commercial, family-safe site
http://www.davidillig.com/astronomy.shtml.

Happy shooting!

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com