Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hi all,

Did a search on the site and only 2 posts came up. One of them had a link to someone who has some awesome photos which they've taken from their Toronto backyard. Since my work is so busy, and I only seem to have time at night to do stuff ... I thought I'd look into this area to feed my photography hunger.

Is there anyone else who is interested in this type of photography? I know very little, but would like to know more regarding what equipment works best with DSLRs within a certain budget, and best methods to take the 2 styles of photos I've seen, telescopic photos of focused areas of the sky, and complete star night photos.

Maybe an ad-hoc event can be set up if there are enough interested folks, and if there are some people who have done this photography with some success ... obviously very weather dependant.

Cheers,
Alan

Certain telescopes allow you to attach a camera adapter to it. Efston Science is a great place to find camera adapters:

http://www.escience.ca/telescopes/RENDE ... W1051.html

You should talk to Downtown Dan here, he's the guy.

An acquaintance directed me to this site: http://www.samirkharusi.net/

He also mentioned Googling something called a "barn door" tracker mount. He did some pretty good stacked image shots. I never ended up looking into it though.

*EDIT* Forgot to list another useful link: free sky map software

http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/

I'm sure that there is interest out there -- we've done a few of these events in the past. There were a couple of trips up to Torrance Barrens (one this past summer!) as well as to Long Sault. Another one was shooting the lunar eclipse from U of T campus a couple of years ago....

Thanks, Andy, for that vote of confidence; and also ditto to what Sue said.

For most types of astrophotpgraphy, you want to get far away from city lights. My own passion (or at least one of them) is "star trails" -- you just need a tripod and a very dark sky. But, with the right equipment, you can certainly shoot the moon or (with a telescope) the planets, from an urban setting.

At the York U observing sessions (every Wednesday I think), you can (supposedly) attach your camera to their scope.

Better still, go to one of the observing nights organized by the Toronto Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and check out what 10 or 15 people are doing in terms of their astrophotography set-ups.

Good luck!

p.s. On a side note... the prospects for the Perseid meteors are very good for August 2010.

I got some awesome moon pictures using a Dobsonian with my Nikon. It's a good starting point.

Thank you for the feedback ... this totally facinates me I'll dig into it more.