I decided to purchase an SBIG ST-8300M to replace the 10D and 5DMkII for astrophotography. Although these camera are amazing performers they just don’t hold up without modifications for deep sky subjects due to their muffled sensitivity to hydrogen-alpha light. I also own an SBIG STV and SBIG ST-5C and the company makes great hardware. The ST-8300 is a bargain when compared with most other dedicated astrophotography cameras and when combined with a filter wheel and good filters you can take extremely high quality pictures for a fraction of what the ultra high-end hardware costs.

There have been a lot of reports of the 5D’s trouble with bright point lights. I recently updated to the new firmware (version 1.0.7) and took some test shots with the 5D Mark II and a Takahashi FS102 refractor. I also wanted to test out the sensitivity at various ISO values. All these pictures were taken from my driveway on a day with fairly bad seeing and transparency. I got out a ladder and threw a blanket over one of the street lights but it didn’t help much with the sky glow.

I recently had some of my old astrophoto slides scanned with a Noritsu slide scanner so I can put them into permanent storage and finally move into 100% digital photography. I’ve learned a lot about image processing and the tools are much better now than they were when I originally took the photos. There are three major changes that affect the quality: The slide scanner is much better (although the lab gave me JPG files instead of 16bit TIFF files, what the hell?

It’s been at least three years since I’ve done any astrophotograpy but last night I lugged out the equipment and shot a few frames. I only made it out as far as the driveway and the sky isn’t very dark in northern San Diego but it’s amazing what kind of results you can get with a Canon 10D. Traditionally you would use either slide film or a cooled, black and white CCD sensor.