DSLRUsers.com

Reaaally long exposures I mean

I was looking at the 6 minute exposure Big V posted of the milky way in this thread: http://www.dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?t=20373
and wondering if it was possible to do these long exposures on the D70 ? I haven't had it that long but I'm of the impression the slowest shutter speed is 30 seconds. According to his sig Big V has a 300D which also has a 30 second minimum shutter speed, so what kajiggery do you need to employ to pull off these sort of shots ?

Cheers

Jay

It is, you need to use bulb mode.

Put the camera in manual mode, then you can select your exposure time to be bulb.

You will also need a remote, unless you want to be holding the shutter open the whole time

Get yourself one of these: http://tinyurl.com/kglzo from Jaycar.

Program it as per this: http://www.dslrusers.net./viewtopic.php?t=747

Set the camera in to bulb mode (Manual with shutter speed set to --) and press the remote Vol+ to open the shutter for as long as you want and then Vol+ again to close it.

Note that to take star photos you really need to mount the camera on a tracking device as the Earth turns too quickly.

You will need to take a dark frame as well when using the D70. Take a picture of equal length with the lens cap on and then subtract this from the original. The subtraction is done in software. You will need to do this because the noise levels on the D70 will produce two red semi-circles, one at the top and theother at the bottom of the frame and these spoil the look of the picture. This is the main reason I use the 300D from Canon, dont have to worry about it until I start going longet than 10 minutes and even then it only shows up on the far right of the frame, so a simple crop can take care of it if I am feeling lazy..
The tracking of the camera is another issue, this can be done if you have access to a good quality motor driven telescope mount or if you are feeling adventurous you can make yourself a simple barn door tracker and sit there manually turning the screw..google for "barn door tracking mount" and you will be presented with many suitable and cheap designs, you can make these for a few dollars..

While everything that's been said so far is true, the D70 is not the best camera to use for long exposures.

gstark wrote:While everything that's been said so far is true, the D70 is not the best camera to use for long exposures.

I have to echo what Gary said, even with noise reduction turned my exposures over 3 minutes are filled with artifacts from the removal of hot pixels etc.

I agree it is not the best but you can still produce some worthwhile results if you try a few things. The first is to turn noise reduction off and do it manually, you get far better results. The other thing is you have to shoot in nef. If you trying doing it in jpg, then the artifacts will be random and will not subtract properly, giving terrible results. Just because it is not perfect does not mean you should not and try and push the envelope. It is after all just your time and you may be surprised at how far you can take it. Cheaper than having to buy a canon or a D200 etc.
Oh and dont forget if you take a series of exposures of a few minutes and then stack them using software, this can give you the same result of an exposure taken at much longer times. So try 5 at 2 minutes will equal what you can do with a single 10 minute exposure. This also gives yoiu the advantage of being able to do it from a light polluted area, because a really long exposure will come out brown/yellow depending on how bad the light pollution is..

ATJ wrote:Get yourself one of these: http://tinyurl.com/kglzo from Jaycar.

Program it as per this: http://www.dslrusers.net./viewtopic.php?t=747

Awesome, I'll head down to jaycar tomorrow morning and grab one. Cheers!

Big V, you've lost me a little there with the technicalities, I haven't started playing with RAWs yet but I'll keep all that in mind when I get up to it, thanks

Hang on, I just flicked the camera into bulb mode and the ML-L3 remote ( THIS ONE ) that I got with the camera works too.

They're much the same price on ebay as the jaycar ones used to be - is there any benefit with the jaycar one or has the price of the others just come down alot since their release ?

Big V wrote:the noise levels on the D70 will produce two red semi-circles, one at the top and theother at the bottom of the frame and these spoil the look of the picture.

Is this the sort of thing you're talking about ? I just took this shot off my back veranda but got bored waiting so went to do something else while it exposed and promptly forgot about it for 10 minutes It's also probably grubby because it was shot in jpg too.



At first I thought "WOW, look at all those stars" then I realised those stars weren't stars at all... hehe

A bit of a late reply I know, but I've been out of action much of the past 2 weeks due to smashing my head in (unintentionally!) on the long cycling commute home from work.
Whilst the D70 isnt ideal for astrophotography, I have obtained some nice astrophotos with it, for example see:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~loomberah/machholz.htm
and
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~loomberah/linearT7.htm
and
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~loomberah/neat.htm

One of the exposures used in the first link is about 460 sec, almost 8 minutes, and having NR on has given quite good results.

Gordon