Re: Fun with the Sony A7 Series Cameras( all of them)
First, I know that some may scoff at this post as not suitable for this forum, or not photography, or whatever. They may be right! But what I say in my defense is that I was certainly having fun with my A7R!
This summer I had the good fortune to spend a couple of months under fairly dark skies (Bortle class 2, for those who care). About 6 weeks before departure, I decided this might be the moment to attempt a bit of serious (amateur) astrophotography. At that point, I knew nothing about astronomy or astrophotography, nor had I ever looked through a telescope. After wading through thousands of forum posts and astronomy sites, I finally started assembling a telescope, mount, and astrophotography kit.
Below is my first attempt at M101 – the pinwheel galaxy – taken from a blue zone (I didn’t feel like driving to the really dark site that night). Keep in mind this was the third time I actually looked through and used my telescope (or any telescope), and my second attempt at deep sky imaging. Same goes for using an equatorial tracking mount. I started from scratch in every respect, and had no help in the field. My setup includes: a Celestron EdgeHD 8" with reducer, Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G tracking mount, TPI spreader, Starlight feathertouch micro focuser, and Sony A7R and A6000 for prime-focus AP. This gear (especially the scope) is unforgiving for an imaging beginner, but I really wanted to dabble in planetary at some point, so had to start somewhere. Hopefully I'll be able to add a nice refractor (500-900mm fl) in the next year or two, though they can get quite expensive!
For the composite shown here, I used about 80, 30-second unguided (but still tracked) subexposures (subs in astrophotography speak) from an unmodded A7R, half at ISO 1600 and half at ISO 2000. The .7x reducer was also used. Processing was done in DeepSkyStacker/Photoshop, as the premier astrophotography processing application, PixInsight, makes my head hurt.
Obviously, more frames (subs), better processing, and more experience will help me in the future. But I'm still reasonably pleased with this result, considering how new I am to the hobby and all that it entails.
It may sound like a special form of punishment to attempt this endeavor, but as I said, I found it thrilling and fun. Cheers.