My CHEAP Astrophotography Kit for DEEP SPACE!

hi everyone this is trevor jones from astrobackyard.com and this is a very exciting video because i'm going to be putting together the ultimate beginners deep sky astro photography rake and it's going to look a little different than you think no telescopes involved this is very affordable budget friendly gear really entry level so if you're into that kind of thing and you want to build your first deep sky astro photography rig on the cheap this video is for you okay first let me get this out of the way so what some people consider cheap can be expensive to others but the art of astrophotography is notoriously expensive in terms of the kind of gear you need this is kind of an entry level bare bones point to enter the hobby and start taking tracked long exposure images of deep sky objects in the night sky so let's get right into it what we're working with here the first thing you probably notice right behind me here is the star tracker this is the sky watcher star adventurer this is the newer version the 2i the older version is pretty close to the same thing but this is the star tracker i recommend and it's the biggest purchase out of them all other than the camera you don't need a star tracker to start taking long exposure images in the night sky but just expect those stars begin to trail and you really can't tap into those longer focal length camera lenses until you get a tracker so that's really important there's a few other great ones the ioptron sky gutter pro is also awesome the camera itself this is very exciting i purchased this just for the sake of this video and a few other really cool secret projects coming up a nice collab coming up but this is an entry-level dslr one of the most top-selling entry-level dslr's right now the canon eos rebel t7 it is nothing special but it came in this kit package with two lenses and a carrying bag and a memory card for 550 american which is really great considering the price of some of the more advanced cameras so if you're just getting into photography and astrophotography a kit like this is really great it's not going to let you down and man there's some really fun things you can do with the kit like this and i can't wait to get started just a few more items to unpack here before i really dig into things a remote shutter release cable so this just controls the imaging session for the camera you can set in how long you want the exposure to be how often how many so really handy especially when you're starting to use use a star tracker and take multiple images and then it came with a 16 gigabyte memory card a class 10 which is going to work just fine for us we'll capture lots of images on this little dslr and then paint shop pro 2021 ultimate won't be using that at all lastly we have a little ball head here just a generic amazon ball head knee where is the brand and this we're just going to use to attach to the top of the star tracker just to give us a little more flexibility in terms of the angles that we point the camera in but let's dig right into the camera and specifically the lenses so we're right around the thousand dollar range thus far with the camera at 550 us dollars and the star tracker just around 450 so those are the two big expenses to get over with but they will last you for a long time you can have lots of fun with it so let's look at these camera lenses that came with this kit so there's two lenses in here one is in with the included with the camera itself that's the 18 to 55 millimeter kit lens that's a very common lens with these canon cameras that comes with it so if you've got an entry level canon rebel dslr chances are you have that 18 to 55 millimeter lens we'll get into that next but first the 75 to 300 so if you understand how lenses work this is a zoom telephoto that 300 is your magnification 300 millimeter focal length and that's some pretty serious magnification so if you're planning on taking pictures of nebulae and galaxies up close you need that magnification right the problem is this is a pretty cheap lens i've actually this is my second one i sold the first one the optics aren't great it's a under 200 lens included with the bundle you get plenty of use out of it but you will outgrow it and become unsatisfied with it over time to start out with though you can have a lot of fun with this lens 58 millimeter thread filter size it does have auto focus but we'll just be using manual focus with this lens so the aperture or the f-stop on this lens is f4 to f 5.6 when it comes to lenses for astrophotography some of those fast lenses are what you want i've talked about the sigma 24 millimeter f 1.4 before letting in plenty of light to reach that sensor shooting at that wide open aperture of f 1.4 in comparison at f4 to f 5.6 when fully zoomed out not so fast but it will get the job done typically with these lenses like this you want to stop down to those higher f-stops anyway to get sharper stars with this lens i have a feeling the sweet spot is probably around f 6.3 around there so a bit slower but you'll see what i mean later now we'll pull out the dslr the t7 and the kit lens this is so much fun so when you buy a new camera of course it comes with a brand new battery a charger and a strap you don't want to put that strap on there if you're you know attaching a camera to your star tracker you don't want that camera strap blown around in the wind so don't attach that there's the camera here small lightweight very capable little dslr camera now what i'll say about the t7 is that it doesn't have that flip out lcd screen like the t7 i do and some of the other intermediate level cameras that feature would be really well appreciated for astrophotography because if you can picture this thing pointing straight up you want to flip out that screen and be able to adjust settings like focus and change camera settings and all that but very capable little camera and if you've got this camera here i've got great news for you it can take some amazing astro photos with it kit lens is in there somewhere i'll pull that out this is like christmas okay here's the kit lens the 18 to 55 millimeter so again a zoom lens but a much shorter focal length so really the most useful focal length for astrophotography on this little lens is probably at 18 millimeters take those wide angle shots with a crop sensor dslr like the t7 it's going to be a little bit tighter than you'd have with a full frame camera but still plenty wide at 18 millimeters so this is an f 3.5 to 5.6 so 3.5 at that shortest focal length of 18 millimeters and then 5.6 at the 55 millimeter so again similar boat just kind of an entry level kind of a cheap feeling lens but it will get the job done and still be a lot of fun i i personally get a lot of enjoyment out of really maximizing the performance out of the gear that i have so not bad a very capable camera that will last for years to come and two lenses for about 550 us dollars nice little kit and it even came with this canon bag and i've got about 10 of these now here is the star tracker the sky watchers star adventure and this really is the key to the whole astro photography rig without this you just have a camera on a tripod which is fine speaking of tripods this is a really nice carbon fiber really tall and rigid tripod you want to get a very decent tripod don't skimp on a cheap tripod you need that stability there's a million tripods available aim to spend about a hundred dollars on your on your tripod at least to get a quality model this one was a little more than that it's probably a bit overkill for this star tracker this is the skywatcher star adventure and basically its job it slowly moves with the motion of the night sky and allows you to take tracked exposures the key to these though you have to balance the load using the counterweight here camera goes on top and then you if you have a balanced load you'll get that nice smooth tracking any equatorial mount needs to be polar aligned with the celestial pole to have that accurate tracking of the motion of the night sky so all those basics of tracking the night sky and equatorial mounts come into play here but once you get that it's pretty straightforward in terms of how we use this camera and lens on the tracker to get pictures of the night sky there's a few pieces to this star tracker and i've done a full review on this one actually the earlier model than this before but this is the wedge base here where you actually set your latitude and then the star tracker itself is just this part on top slides into the base on the right angle for your latitude and of course you can adjust that with this knob it goes up and down and then it's actually got the counterweight kit here too this is the pro pack so you attach your camera on the top here and this is the counterweight to balance things out very ingenious system because there's a few ways to actually balance this rig which kind of sets this one apart from the competition but on top of this star tracker this is where the ball head comes in we can of course just mount the camera to the threaded screw at the top here but then we're limited to this angle that the star tracker is on whereas if we put a ball head on between that right here so we've got the ball head attached on the top there we take the plate out attach this to the bottom of the camera i mean if you've ever used a tripod before i'm sure you know how to use a ball head and now we can point the camera and lens in the whatever orientation we want with the flexibility of this ball head and this camera is nice and light and these lenses as well so we'll have no issues in terms of carrying the load i think this ball heads rated for 11 pounds uh and that's getting into the overall payload capacity of the star tracker itself so no issues there but i'm much more flexible in the ways we can point by attaching the ball head to the top of the platform here very capable rig and one of the last pieces we have here is this remote shutter release cable so this camera and you want to check to get the right one for your camera has the little audio style jack on the side here and i can plug this in and control my session so this is essentially the rig here i'll just get it set up with a lens on it so you can see it fully ready to go so i'll attach the remote shutter release cable here and we've got ourselves a nice little very capable astrophotography rig now there's something i know a lot of you are thinking right now and that is well this is a stock dslr camera it's not modified for astrophotography is shooting with a rig like this a waste of time absolutely not so a modified camera yes it will pick up more of those reds in the hydrogen alpha wavelength of a lot of emission nebula and deep sky objects so yes very powerful to have an astro modified camera you could get this one modified later on if you want with a stock camera though there's plenty you can do and a lot of times i actually prefer to use a stock camera in terms of the types of colors it produces and the images so for reflection nebulae for star clusters for galaxies a stock camera just creates these beautiful cool blue colored images that i absolutely love white balance and all that you can change afterwards just like you would in landscape photography or any type of serious photography you'll be shooting in raw image format so we can really manipulate those images after the fact but this is our rig here so typically with a lens like this because even at the shortest focal length of 75 millimeters we're gonna need to track the motion of the night sky or we have blurry photos so let's say we're taking 30 seconds 60 seconds 90 second exposures without this remote shutter release cable you're limited to a 30 second maximum on bulb or manual mode of this camera iso settings that we'd be using is somewhere along the lines of 800 or 1600 knowing these canon rebel dslrs that's probably the sweet spot in terms of the noise performance in those higher isos but the real power of this rig is by taking multiple exposures so by capturing say 40 to 50 90 second exposures with a rig like this tracked you can create some really beautiful images after the image processing has been applied i'm probably going to use this lens around the midway point around 150 millimeters so i'm kind of at that mid range where i can still capture deep sky objects but it also has the benefits of the shorter focal length not as demanding on the tracking but a very capable little system here and uh if you've got a camera like this add a star tracker and you are off to the races so out of the two lenses i think the 75 to 300 will be something i would use more often than that 18 to 55 but that's just because of the time of year there's some great winter nebulae and galaxy deep sky objects that i want to shoot with some longer focal links between those two lenses you can have a lot of fun so we're at about a thousand for the camera and the tracker the two key components with the lenses add another 100 for the tripod we're at 1100 remote shutter release cable 20 bucks ball head another 20 bucks so just over a thousand dollars for a very capable astrophotography rig and i'm going to prove it to you what's capable with this rig in an upcoming collaboration video with someone you know that's going to be so much fun and just i love the idea of maximizing the performance out of a very beginner level rig like this i am really excited to start using this rig under some clear dark skies i have high hopes for the performance i can get out of this very budget-friendly rig and i hope you follow along for the ride and watch my progress with it and until next time clear skies [Music] someone from canada calling hello this is nico mr carver how's it going man oh hey trevor i'm good how are you i'm doing really good i actually just got a new dslr camera kit that i want to try out oh no kidding me too really well that's weird yeah it's weird we should do a shootout though i am so in all right well let's set some ground rules how about one night one kit lens pick any target you want and the best image wins just using this new dslr kit in a star tracker right and then we'll do a full video on the reveal you read my mind [Music] you

Channel: AstroBackyard

Views: 192,052

Keywords: astrophotography on a budget, best astrophotography camera, astrophotography setup, astrophotography kit, star tracker, cheap astrophotography setup, cheap astrophotography camera, beginner astrophotography setup, beginner astrophotography rig, getting started, beginner equipment, DSLR camera, Canon, Canon Rebel T7, Canon T7, Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer, astrophotography bundle, basic setup for deep-sky astrophotography, deep space astrophotography, camera lens

Id: 9ZPjew874GE

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021