Less then $250 digital camera?

Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county clerks
offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and a
digital camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop with a
5 hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software and
any planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left in
the budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not enough
for a serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any recommendation
for a budget digital camera that could take both terrestrial and
celestial images? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...Dennis

On Jun 8, 8:29 pm, "Dennis Allen" wrote:
Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county clerks
offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and a
digital camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop with a
5 hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software and
any planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left in
the budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not enough
for a serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any recommendation
for a budget digital camera that could take both terrestrial and
celestial images? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...Dennis

No cheap camera is capable of any kind of decent astronomical images,
without attaching to a telescope, but I hesitate to ask what it has to
do with geneology?
Try a Fuji F20, at least it's high ISO images are clean enough so
whatever weather you run into won't matter as much, dark days, etc.

If the camera doesn't have to be new, you could try getting the older
Olympus C-Z series: C2020Z C4040Z.... A friend has instructions on the
requisite accessories to hook it up via a T-mount:
http://www.nwgis.com/greg/equip.htm


On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 20:29:45 -0400, "Dennis Allen"
wrote:

Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county clerks
offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and a
digital camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop with a
5 hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software and
any planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left in
the budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not enough
for a serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any recommendation
for a budget digital camera that could take both terrestrial and
celestial images? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...Dennis

=============
- Dale Gombert (SkySea at aol.com)
122.38W, 47.58N, W. Seattle, WA
http://flavorj.com/~skysea

P.S. He also has pictures he's taken with that camera on his site
(mostly Moon), and I've got a few I've taken on mine:
http://flavorj.com/~skysea/Images/Astro/index.html
(Moon, planets, Trapezium, M13)

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 20:29:45 -0400, "Dennis Allen"
wrote:

Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county clerks
offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and a
digital camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop with a
5 hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software and
any planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left in
the budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not enough
for a serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any recommendation
for a budget digital camera that could take both terrestrial and
celestial images? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...Dennis

=============
- Dale Gombert (SkySea at aol.com)
122.38W, 47.58N, W. Seattle, WA
http://flavorj.com/~skysea

"Dennis Allen" wrote in message
...
Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county clerks
offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and a digital
camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop with a 5
hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software and any
planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left in the
budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not enough for a
serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any recommendation for a
budget digital camera that could take both terrestrial and celestial
images? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...Dennis

Any digital camera -- including the simple point-and-shoot cameras -- will
give you fine results when you are taking photos of headstones in graveyards
for your genealogical work. My experience in photographing old headstones
is that the camera is not the problem -- the problems are (1) light not
falling on the headstone in such a way as to make the inscription legible;
(2) lichens, moss, general crud, and erosion have made the inscriptions
almost illegible. So -- when you take a photo of a headstone that you need
for your genealogy, unless you are certain that the photo shows the
inscription clearly, you need to write the inscription in your genealogy
notebook -- which you carry with you at all times.

Any digital camera with an LCD screen will let you view the photo so you can
tell if the photo shows what you want it to show.

I have a Sony DSC-P93 -- it's a few years old -- that I use for terrestrial
and astronomic photography. I have had excellent results with it in
photographing gravestones; old photos; pages from old diaries, Bibles, and
the like; and general photography.

For astronomic photography, it depends on what you want. If you are after
detailed photos of astronomic objects, then you aren't looking at a small
investment -- you'll need a CCD imager; a scope on a mount that has flawless
tracking; stacking software; and a lot of time and patience. On the other
hand, if you are satisfied with simple photos taken through the eyepiece,
you can do that with a camera such as the Sony that I have.

Scopetronix sells a variety of adapters. In the case of my Sony DSC-P93,
there is a ring around the lens that unlocks and twists off. The
Scopetronix adapter twists on. The second part of the adapter is a threaded
ring that screws onto an eyepiece and onto the adapter on the camera. Then,
slip the eyepiece into the eyepiece holder of the scope, turn on the camera,
turn the flash off, look at the LCD screen, focus, shot, and hope you didn't
move the scope too much while focussing, shooting, et. With a Scopetronix
adapter and patience, you can get decent shots of the moon, Saturn, and
Jupiter. Shots of anything else really don't show anything but dots of
light.

Here are some shots of Saturn with the Sony camera and the Scopetronix
adapter:
http://www.schlatter.org/Dad/Astrono...march_2007.htm

http://www.schlatter.org/Dad/Astrono...march_2007.htm

I also have a Kodak digital camera -- EasyShare C300. On a few occasions, I
held this camera up to the eyepiece and shot -- here are some results:
http://www.schlatter.org/Dad/Astrono...and_saturn.htm

http://www.schlatter.org/Dad/Astrono...006_photos.htm

No doubt you'll receive a lot of answers to your query -- my experience and
knowledge are extremely limited but there it is.

I'll chime in a bit here, too. Look for a camera that has an LCD that
can handle the outdoors... the Kodaks are pretty good in that regard.
You'll discover that trying to take pictures in the sunshine... or at
least reviewing what you've just taken is much easier with better LCDs.
I'd go for a larger LCD, too, so that you can see the composition more
easily.

As to astro work, you can do some wonderful through the eyepiece stuff,
but also you can take some good wide field constellation shots. For
that, you should get a camera that is capable of a manual setting and,
say, 12-24 seconds exposure. I have an old Kodak DX3900 that works just
great. They can take 16 second shots and their color rendition is so
good that you can make out tints on stars that match their actual
colors. That unit also has the advantage of an infinity setting and
dedicated self-timer and infinity buttons-- both a real advantage for
astro shots. (Through the scope, you want to do a self-timer so that
the shakes settle down before it snaps the shot.)

The one downside on many Kodaks is that the self-timer is 10 seconds...
the Canons have a 2 second self-timer which makes for much faster turn
around for the next shot. But the older Canon's ISO 400 is too
speckle--don't know about the newer models; Kodak's 400 is better.
Other digicam are even better.

The newer cameras now are generally better, but in some cases, they've
dropped the older features... the new Kodaks seem to have settled on 8
second max which eliminates good constellation shots. But the older
cameras had small LCDs, and generally were miserable outdoors, so the
newer cameras are the better bet.

Check out the reviews on such sites as Steve's Digicam and Digital
Photography Review-- IIRC, both show low light and night shots in their
reviews--- which is a helpful guide.

Larry Stedman
Suburban Milky Way

Well, after I'm done with my genealogy work I'd like to get my feet wet
in the digital world. I have a big scope, but still using a Nikon F for
prime focus work and a Canon MG for piggybacking milkway shots...Dennis

"Rich" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Jun 8, 8:29 pm, "Dennis Allen" wrote:
Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county
clerks
offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and a
digital camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop
with a
5 hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software and
any planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left in
the budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not
enough
for a serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any recommendation
for a budget digital camera that could take both terrestrial and
celestial images? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...Dennis

No cheap camera is capable of any kind of decent astronomical images,
without attaching to a telescope, but I hesitate to ask what it has to
do with geneology?
Try a Fuji F20, at least it's high ISO images are clean enough so
whatever weather you run into won't matter as much, dark days, etc.

So far I've had recommendations on a Fuji F20, Olympus C-Z series, Sony
DSC-P93, and the Kodak DX3900. Except for F20, these cameras are a few
years old. Does anyone know the current models of these cameras?

"Larry Stedman" wrote in message
...
I'll chime in a bit here, too. Look for a camera that has an LCD
that
can handle the outdoors... the Kodaks are pretty good in that regard.
You'll discover that trying to take pictures in the sunshine... or at
least reviewing what you've just taken is much easier with better
LCDs.
I'd go for a larger LCD, too, so that you can see the composition more
easily.

As to astro work, you can do some wonderful through the eyepiece
stuff,
but also you can take some good wide field constellation shots. For
that, you should get a camera that is capable of a manual setting and,
say, 12-24 seconds exposure. I have an old Kodak DX3900 that works
just
great. They can take 16 second shots and their color rendition is so
good that you can make out tints on stars that match their actual
colors. That unit also has the advantage of an infinity setting and
dedicated self-timer and infinity buttons-- both a real advantage for
astro shots. (Through the scope, you want to do a self-timer so that
the shakes settle down before it snaps the shot.)

The one downside on many Kodaks is that the self-timer is 10
seconds...
the Canons have a 2 second self-timer which makes for much faster turn
around for the next shot. But the older Canon's ISO 400 is too
speckle--don't know about the newer models; Kodak's 400 is better.
Other digicam are even better.

The newer cameras now are generally better, but in some cases, they've
dropped the older features... the new Kodaks seem to have settled on 8
second max which eliminates good constellation shots. But the older
cameras had small LCDs, and generally were miserable outdoors, so the
newer cameras are the better bet.

Check out the reviews on such sites as Steve's Digicam and Digital
Photography Review-- IIRC, both show low light and night shots in
their
reviews--- which is a helpful guide.

Larry Stedman
Suburban Milky Way

Does anyone have any options on the Kodak Easyshare C875? Could I
piggyback it on my telescope and take milkway shots to create a mosaic?
How hard would it be to mount to the eyepiece?

"Dennis Allen" wrote in message
...
Hi. In a short while I'll be on my week-long roadtrip. I'm doing
genealogy work on my family tree, visiting cemeteries and county
clerks offices. I'm getting a laptop for the family tree software and
a digital camera to take headstone images.

I've got a tight tight budget, so I ordered Gateway NX570X laptop with
a 5 hour battery. Should have enough room for family tree software
and any planetarium/astrophotography software. I've got a little left
in the budget over for a digital camera, but not much, certainly not
enough for a serious camera like a 30D. Does anyone have any
recommendation for a budget digital camera that could take both
terrestrial and celestial images? Any advice would be greatly
appreciated...Dennis

Dennis, check out Scopetronix digi-t adapter kits. One takes off the
eyeguard on standard Plossls, attaches the digi-T system and then with
the appropriate camera adapter screws them together. Tight fit, works
well, and the direct mating means that you don't have the positioning
and other hassles of other systems.

Yep, we've been recommending older cameras because that's what we've
seen and used... the key is to check out the newer cameras to see if
they have the features being mentioned he manual controls, at least
12 seconds of open shutter time, fast self-timer, ISO 400 or 800 that
doesn't end up speckled, etc.

Given that you have a combo interest-- daytime type work, plus night
time--I recommend that you look at the major digicam sites (steve's
digicam, dpreview, dcresource, etc.)-- look at the forums (even post
your questions there, too), their reviews are comprehensive and cover a
range of picture taking-- low-light, document photography, outdoors,
etc. They're an incredible resource!

You could see if they've reviewed the C875 and check the Kodak site for
specs on the camera. If you're under darker skies, and have a good
camera mount on the scope, you should be able to get some nice Mikly Way
shots with the right camera!

In article ,
"Dennis Allen" wrote:

Does anyone have any options on the Kodak Easyshare C875? Could I
piggyback it on my telescope and take milkway shots to create a mosaic?
How hard would it be to mount to the eyepiece?


Larry Stedman
Suburban Milky Way