Quote:
Originally Posted by OddBall
Thanks!
Those were taken with the Canon EFS 18-135. Yeah, auto focus does tend to wig out. 
I have the Canon EF 50 1.8 that you mentioned, so I'll try that tonight.
I also have a Canon EFS 55-250. Would that be of any use?
Light wash wasn't bad, but the mountains or the beach will be better. If next weekend is clear, I may just head out to the Outer Banks and camp out on Pea Island. That's about as far out as I can get.
Oh, I also have a mount for my 4 inch telescope. I might have to give that a try and see what happens. |
For me, focus is the hardest part. I always shoot a few shots and review on the LCD zoomed in and adjust accordingly. Once I get focus locked in, I use blue masking tape to tape the focus ring down. Don't ask how a now know to to do this.
You'll be able to get some very nice shots with the 50mm 1.8 though the manual focus ring isn't very precise. You can get sharp focus, but it's difficult to keep locked in. The field of view is limited but you can take multiple shots overlapping by 40-50% and merge to panorama in LR or PS. I used mine to take the attached pano. Probably my best pano todate. Two rows of 11 shots in portrait orientation. It's ~200 degrees and I used a pano head but you can easily take narrower fields of view with just a tripod. Lightroom merged these on the first try.
The 55-250 would be hard to do much with unless your telescope mount is an equatorial motorized mount. If it is, check to see if it's suitable for doing astrophotography. Some mounts are great for viewing but not precise enough for camera work. 250mm on your camera is effectively 400mm. At 250 it's f5.6 so you'd be hard pressed to get much without a good tracking mount.
Use the dark sky finder site to pick your location. A week or so either side of the new moon is ideal. You just have to be mindful of the moon rise and set times.
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/winston-salem
And where the moon will be if it's above the horizon.
The Photographer's Ephemeris - Web App
And finally where the Milky Way will be. This is the last "good" month until April or so. The core of the Milky Way is the interesting part and it's only visible certain times of the years. Now, it goes below the horizon pretty early... before 1am I think. There are phone apps that help a great deal planning this. Photopills for IOS (and I think maybe Android now) and PlanIT Pro for Android. I use the later but Photopills is more popular. Both have some features the other doesn't. Stellarium is a stand alone PC app that is also useful. I use it a lot for planning. All of these have a substantial learning curve.
Back to the telescope mount. It's likely that it's more sturdy than your tripod so it may be a good choice if you have hardware to mount the camera. And if it's a motorized EQ mount good for photography, look in to getting a T-mount to just mount your camera on the telescope!