![]() ![]() Images Plus will also capture the Live View signal from Nikon DSLRs. Software programs including EOS Movie Recorder, Images Plus, Backyard EOS, and Astro Photography Tool allow you to capture the Canon Live View video signal on your computer, even if the camera doesn’t shoot video. When recording planetary videos with your DSLR, use the camera’s exposure-simulation mode if available. Adjust the shutter speed and ISO to control the exposure. If you underexpose, your stacked result will be noisy, and might not be salvageable. On nights of mediocre seeing, you can use less magnification and get a wider field, but expect to record less detail. If you have a night of superb seeing, you can push the magnification up to about f/30. ![]() ![]() A simple rule of thumb for high-resolution work is to shoot at about f/20. Use a high-quality Barlow or eyepiece projection to increase your effective focal length. The amount of magnification should be based on the camera’s pixel size. Increasing Your Focal Lengthĭue to a planet’s small apparent size, you’ll need to magnify the image so that it’s sufficiently sampled by the pixels in your camera. Live View displays the video image from the sensor to either the screen on the back of the camera or to a computer monitor. You will, however, need additional software to record the Live View video feed on your computer.Īlthough Canon cameras come with EOS Utility software that allows remote control of the camera, the program will only record video onto the memory card in the camera using its standard video modes, not Live View. The framing rate you get with video shot in the camera is usually 24 or 30 frame per second, and it won’t drop frames because all of the processing is handled by the camera’s internal processor. Not all cameras have the latter option, but most cameras that include Live View can be used with the first method. The first is to capture the Live View video feed with a computer using a USB connection. The other is to record a cropped video with the camera itself, if your camera model has this feature. There are two planetary imaging ways to record planetary videos with a DSLR at a 1:1 pixel ratio. The author captured each of these images using a Celestron C11 EdgeHD operating at f/29 and a Canon EOS Rebel T2i in Live View mode. But you can also use your DSLR as a high-speed video camera to take great high-resolution images of the Sun, Moon, and planets like the fine examples above of Neptune, Uranus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. It’s not uncommon to see deep photographs of nebulae and galaxies taken with a stock DSLR, or the Milky Way captured over a picturesque landscape. It’s surprising what DSLR cameras are capable of these days. Use a star near your target to collimate your scope just before you shoot to ensure your best collimation. Newtonian reflectors, Schmidt-Cassegrains, and other mirror-based telescopes need to be precisely collimated to perform at their best. This down-samples every frame, reducing the resolution of the image. In 1080p high-definition video mode, the camera records an image that is only 1,920 pixels wide by 1,080 pixels high. Although you can use normal high-definition 1080p or 720p video modes for lunar and solar imaging with great results, you generally don’t want to use this mode for planetary work because it resamples the image recorded by the camera’s detector, and you will lose fine detail.įor example, the sensor in the Canon EOS Rebel T3i (also called the 600D) has an array of 5,184 by 3,456 pixels. Cameras with Live View offer the easiest route, using the zoom preview mode to get to a 1:1 crop of the central portion of the camera’s detector. The trick to capturing the highest-resolution, planetary imaging details with a DSLR is to use a mode that allows you to record the image off the camera’s sensor at its native pixel resolution. This is where two video modes on your DSLR camera, Live View and high-definition video, come into play. To capture the best planetary images these days, the preferred technique is known as “lucky imaging.” This method records thousands of frames in a high-speed video stream, which you can later sort for the best frames to stack into a final high-resolution image. But few users realize that the video modes available on DSLR cameras are great for recording high-resolution planetary images. And, of course, DSLRs can be used to snap daytime photos of any kind. Using the latest models, you can shoot long-exposure deep-sky images, create time-lapse movies from a set of still images, or record high-definition video with a quality that exceeds footage recorded by some dedicated video cameras. Digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) today are amazingly versatile. ![]()
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