If I hold my camera lens up to a telescope, can I take a picture of what I see?
AmandaS asked:
I was looking at the moon last night through a telescope on my porch and I took a picture, by holding my camera lens up to the lens of the telescope. Im wondering if the picture will come out?
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Cameras.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I was looking at the moon last night through a telescope on my porch and I took a picture, by holding my camera lens up to the lens of the telescope. Im wondering if the picture will come out?
Has anyone ever done this? Seen this? Can you find any examples of this online or in a stock photo?
Thanks.
September 9th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I don’t think it is practical although maybe technically possible. The camera lens would be too big probably to look into the telescope lens and you would have to get it lined up correctly so would need a tripod. Plus you’d probably need to macro focussing to focus on the what is being seen through the telescope. I’m no expert on this but why not try experimenting and see what happens, thats what I would do, you might get some interesting results?
September 12th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Yes it is called afocal photography.
If you got a fast shutter speed of 1/60 of a second or faster the picture should come out. Otherwise it might be a bit blurred.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:34 am
Check out. There are galleries at that site of pictures people have taken through telescopes all the time. The moon, Saturn, Jupiter, even the Sun (with a Solar telescope, that is) etc….I think though that you will need something that will hold the camera still long enough to take the pictures….probably some kind of tripod that you can put close enough to the telescope eyepiece.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Without an adapter it will certainly be hit or miss but yes it will work. There are T mount adapters available that will allow you to connect your camera to a telescope for this purpose.
There is also something called Digiscoping that involves connecting your camera to a spotting scope. This will allow you to get much closer than you would with just a telephoto lens. Digiscoping is quite popular with bird watchers.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
You can try it and see. I tried, and it didn’t work so well. There are adapters to connect cameras to telescopes. Try a site where they sell telescopes and accessories. I think what you need it a t-adapter or t-mount.
September 19th, 2009 at 2:06 am
It will sort of work, but it takes some special equipment to make to work well, As others have mentioned, it takes an adapter to hold the camera steady in the correct position, so you don’t get blurring from the movement of the camera relative to the telescope. With the camera mounted on a telescope, it has to be balanced right, and the scope needs a good, steady mount to prevent shaking. Just like with telephoto lenses, every little bit of motion is magnified. The effective focal length for high magnifications divided by the diameter of the lens or mirror is going to give you a high f number, requiring long exposures (unless the scope has a very big lens or mirror). Not optimized for photography like an expensive telephoto lens, there is likely to be vignetting. For objects in the sky there is the effect of the earth’s rotation, which is magnified. Except for very bright objects like the moon at low magnifications, you need a drive that corrects for this.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I’ve done this with telescopes, and the other direction, with microscopes.
The trick (and it can be very difficult) is to get the camera lined up *exactly* with the center of the image through the scope. If it is off by even a degree or two, you get nothing. The higher the magnification, the more critical this angle becomes.
This is why it is best to use a t-mount adapter if you have an SLR, or any of numerous options with a digicam, to get the camera in the right spot.