You will learn very quickly that your main enemy in taking good photos is the motion of the sky caused by the rotation of the earth. So you’ve been using a beginner setup for a while now, just using a camera and a tripod. Lastly, most any sturdy tripod will function, but if you want to purchase one to keep long-term, the Radian tripod is a great choice.Ī simple setup like this can yield amazing results if you head out to dark skies on a new moon: For the ballhead, pretty much any ball head works, I use an Oben BE117 ball head. You will be doing wide-field photography, so pick a lens that is wide and fast to collect more light. For the lens, a kit lens works fine, but I recommend a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 for this kind of setup. First, you need a camera that has manual exposure settings, so that you can take exposures up to 30 seconds long. There are a couple of key factors in deciding what’s right. There are four things you need for your first astrophotography setup:ĭepending on how much money you have to spare, you can go big or go small with this. If the only thing holding you back is your gear, then you will know exactly what to buy to upgrade when the time comes, but now is not that time! This hobby is expensive, and you do not want to waste your money, and the best way to guarantee that is to wait to upgrade until the gear is the limiting factor in your photography. You need to learn the basics and not get ahead of yourself. Let’s say you’re starting at square one, with no previous camera gear or telescope gear to speak of. Chances are, if you’re an intermediate or advanced astrophotographer, you’ll already know exactly what you need, so we will be more heavily focusing on beginner stuff. For simplicity, I’ll split things up into four categories, beginner, novice, intermediate, and advanced. So I’m here to take off some of the mental effort and guide you in the directions of some good setups, from starting out all the way to advanced. With many brands to choose from for mounts, cameras, telescopes, power supplies, computers, etc., it gets a bit mind-numbing trying to find a good setup that you know will work.

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