Digital vs. Film in Astrophotography

I think that is what I have been saying......

Del Johnson



"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...

The trick with film is that you can expose it even longer than that in
order to
bring some of the wispy detail up on the image, and still have a
reasonable
looking core. But even so, that core has been pushed up onto the flat part
of
the response curve, which means that much of the structural detail has
been
obliterated, even if it doesn't have the characteristic blown-out
appearance of
a saturated CCD image.

Thank you! Well put and very nice work.

Del Johnson





"Jose Suro" wrote in message
. com...
Sorry about the link! I was on the phone and thought I had copied it.

http://astrosurf.com/lorenzi/images/m42.htm

I think 35mm film doesn't have any advantage over CCD other than cost -
but
that's a big one. Also, starting with film and moving to CCD is a good
way
to get your feet wet before spending the megabucks. Film can't compare
with
CCD in sensitivity. I still use it though, because I find the color
saturation of film and the smaller stars appealing.

Happy New Year!

JAS

It's not mine - I wish! It's and example of what's out there, but the
comments stand.

Happy New Year!

JAS

"Del Johnson" delastro@{right star in Orion's belt}.sdsu.edu wrote in
message ...
Thank you! Well put and very nice work.

Del Johnson





"Jose Suro" wrote in message
. com...
Sorry about the link! I was on the phone and thought I had copied it.

http://astrosurf.com/lorenzi/images/m42.htm

I think 35mm film doesn't have any advantage over CCD other than cost -
but
that's a big one. Also, starting with film and moving to CCD is a good
way
to get your feet wet before spending the megabucks. Film can't compare
with
CCD in sensitivity. I still use it though, because I find the color
saturation of film and the smaller stars appealing.

Happy New Year!

JAS

Robert Berta wrote:

snip
And yes...I prefer CCD for astronomy....although I still use film for
wide field imaging. Big chip cameras suitable for covering a wide FOV
and maintaining a favorable sampling ratio are still too
expensive...but they are getting cheaper. However I see the consumer
type big chip digital cameras like the Canons replacing the dedicated
CCD astronomy specific cameras for the average person in a short time.
snip

Interesting thread to read through! Learned a lot!

Question: Now that Canon is using CMOS for it's digital battlewagons, given
your comment, it's worth asking what sort of performance CMOS arrays have,
as compared to both film and CCD.

Thanks,

Bill Tallman

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:49:03 -0800, "Del Johnson" delastro@{right star in
Orion's belt}.sdsu.edu wrote:

I think that is what I have been saying......

Well, then I guess we are in agreement (but while I think the image posted by
Jose is better than the one you suggested, I think this-
http://www.starrywonders.com/m42new.html - taken with a 10D- is better yet. And
that isn't even a proper astrocamera!

Anyway, I still think the non-linear response of film is a disadvantage. I don't
know why I would want to use film, throwing away intensity detail at one end or
the other according to the whim of the emulsion designer, when for less effort I
can collect linear data and apply a compression curve of _my_ design to it to
bring out the detail of _my_ choice.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

"Jack Schmidling" wrote in message
om...
"Michael A. Covington"

Actually my own two best Mars shots are one of each -- one with a
traditional CCD (using a "repeat and pick the best" mode on my STV) and
one
with ToUCam Pro. Since the ToUCam Pro costs only 1/10 as much, and
gives a
color image, and produced a good image with much less work, I consider
it
the winner.....

By definition, there can only be one "best" so you need to make a
choice. However, it still does not prove the point that it wins in
any scientific sense.

Until or unless someone produces a web cam picture as good or better
than the best out there,the CCD wins.

I doubt that the same kind of chip will produce substantially different
pictures at the same temperature with different hardware around it!

The one significant variable is the color mask. I would *expect* monochrome
chips with tricolor masks to have an edge over color chips.

Apart from that, this is almost like asking (in the old days) whether a
Canon or a Nikon would take better astrophotos.