Choosing still cameras for dual use

Like many other people I am interested in choosing a digital camera or
two for dual use. i.e. astrophotographs and terrestrial photographs as
well. Is there somewhere I can go to collect that sort of education?

It appears relatively clear that the Canon 10D, 20D and Digital Rebel
would meet that need. The Digital Rebel is more or less affordable.

However, as a fellow with a fair bit of moderately expensive Nikon
glass, I am interested in whether the Nikon D-70 is capable of decent
astrophotography. At least a few people must have tried it already.

Also, there are now a bunch of 6+ megapixel reflex-type non-removable-
lens digital cameras available. Is there some way to find out about
their suitability for afocal use or for direct use for wide-field shots
without a telescope? I can handle the trivial stuff like long-exposure
capability and remote-triggering and such but I am lost in terms of
detector sensitivity, noise, optical "bandpass" in terms of chip +
filters + electronics and such?

I do not yet know enough about this to ask the questions more
intelligently. My apologies and my thanks for any help.

- Shankar

Shankar,

you can find a comparison of the D70 and and the 10D at
http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/d70v10d/eval.htm

As for other non-removable-lens cameras I would suggest to leave them alone
for astro photos. They all have very small pixels and small pixels can not
"catch" a lot of light which means that you won't get a good signal/noise
ratio (pictures will look noisy).
It is difficult enough to get good deep sky photos with a camera like my
EOS300D (Digital Rebel) and I would expect that using anything worse than
this camera (or a 10D or D70) will give you more frustration then enjoyment.
Of course a "normal" digicam can give you nice shots of the moon or other
bright objects, but not of deep sky objects.

Stefan

"Shankar Bhattacharyya" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
Like many other people I am interested in choosing a digital camera or
two for dual use. i.e. astrophotographs and terrestrial photographs as
well. Is there somewhere I can go to collect that sort of education?

It appears relatively clear that the Canon 10D, 20D and Digital Rebel
would meet that need. The Digital Rebel is more or less affordable.

However, as a fellow with a fair bit of moderately expensive Nikon
glass, I am interested in whether the Nikon D-70 is capable of decent
astrophotography. At least a few people must have tried it already.

Also, there are now a bunch of 6+ megapixel reflex-type non-removable-
lens digital cameras available. Is there some way to find out about
their suitability for afocal use or for direct use for wide-field shots
without a telescope? I can handle the trivial stuff like long-exposure
capability and remote-triggering and such but I am lost in terms of
detector sensitivity, noise, optical "bandpass" in terms of chip +
filters + electronics and such?

I do not yet know enough about this to ask the questions more
intelligently. My apologies and my thanks for any help.

- Shankar

"Stefan Lilge" wrote in
:

Shankar,

you can find a comparison of the D70 and and the 10D at
http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/d70v10d/eval.htm

Thanks. That was very informative, I think. It will take me some time to
digest that. Maybe a lot of time.

As for other non-removable-lens cameras I would suggest to leave
them alone for astro photos. They all have very small pixels and
small pixels can not "catch" a lot of light which means that you
won't get a good signal/noise ratio (pictures will look noisy).

I have begun approaching that conclusion myself. I am beginning to
contemplate the idea that using one of the larger Starlight Express CCD
cameras may be a better overall solution. I am unlikely to do this very
seriously, so I don't think I am looking at escalating rapidly to a big
SBIG camera or anything like that.

Thanks again.

- Shankar

On Sun, 15 May 2005 22:52:18 GMT, Shankar Bhattacharyya
wrote:

However, as a fellow with a fair bit of moderately expensive Nikon
glass, I am interested in whether the Nikon D-70 is capable of decent
astrophotography. At least a few people must have tried it already.

A guy I know says that due to the internal post processing the D70
does he has to turn his off immediately after each exposure, which is
a pain in the you know what.

"Mutz" == Mutz writes:

Mutz On Sun, 15 May 2005 22:52:18 GMT, Shankar Bhattacharyya
Mutz wrote:

However, as a fellow with a fair bit of moderately expensive
Nikon glass, I am interested in whether the Nikon D-70 is capable
of decent astrophotography. At least a few people must have tried
it already.

Mutz A guy I know says that due to the internal post processing the
Mutz D70 does he has to turn his off immediately after each
Mutz exposure, which is a pain in the you know what.

You might find this interesting and relevant

http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/d70v10d/eval.htm

roland
--
PGP Key ID: 66 BC 3B CD
Roland B. Roberts, PhD RL Enterprises
6818 Madeline Court
Brooklyn, NY 11220

Roland Roberts wrote in
:

"Mutz" == Mutz writes:

Mutz On Sun, 15 May 2005 22:52:18 GMT, Shankar Bhattacharyya

A guy I know says that due to the internal post
processing the D70 does he has to turn his off
immediately after each exposure, which is a
pain in the you know what.

You might find this interesting and relevant

http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/d70v10d/eval.htm

Stefan Lilge suggested that as well. I looked at it and found it
informative. It strongly suggests that the Nikon D70 is too much of a
pain to use for this purpose to be worth the trouble. That is a silly
design choice for a camera manufacturer to make. I am not suggesting
that Nikon should have taken astrophotography into account. However,
the idea of not allowing for a true raw file from what is not a low-
end camera is really silly. I asked Nikon about the suitability of
their cameras for astrophotography, as compared the Canons and I got a
response which basically said they have bulb settings and ISO 1600
settings and if I had more questions I should follow up with those. I
have not done that yet. I will follow up with that if this idea begins
to look faintly reasonable at some point. Nikon did tell me what
remote release options were available, which is something I would want
to know anyway.

Principally, at the moment, I am making a terrestrial photography
choice but I had planned to take the astrophotography issues into
account. This makes it a bit more complicated.

- Shankar

"sb" == Shankar Bhattacharyya writes:

sb Roland Roberts wrote in
sb :

"Mutz" == Mutz writes:

Mutz On Sun, 15 May 2005 22:52:18 GMT, Shankar Bhattacharyya

A guy I know says that due to the internal post processing the
D70 does he has to turn his off immediately after each exposure,
which is a pain in the you know what.

You might find this interesting and relevant

http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/d70v10d/eval.htm

[...]

sb Principally, at the moment, I am making a terrestrial
sb photography choice but I had planned to take the
sb astrophotography issues into account. This makes it a bit more
sb complicated.

You might also be interested in this as well. Jerry Lodriguss is a
professional photographer and astrophotographer.

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/M_DAP/M150/M150.HTM

I've just placed an order with Hutech for a modified Canon 350D. The
cameras are apparently difficult to get right now, so there is a 2-month
wait (Hutech has get the camera, then mod it and they're back
ordered---last I checked, even B&H was back-ordered for a stock 350D).

regards,

roland
--
PGP Key ID: 66 BC 3B CD
Roland B. Roberts, PhD RL Enterprises
6818 Madeline Court
Brooklyn, NY 11220