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I recently got a superzoom compact camera (a Panasonic Lumix FZ28) for all-purpose, mostly casual photography. Since it's a compact with a fixed lens, it's not really possible to do conventional (e.g. prime focus) imaging with it. Additionally, like most compacts, it has a fairly small sensor, so getting it to work well in low-light conditions is a challenge (let's just say that I had to take a crash course in "Manual" mode, right from the start). Despite all this, it has worked surprisingly well for piggyback shots using my 100mm equatorially mounted refractor as a platform. The large maximum zoom (18 x) helps a great deal. Many well-known deep-sky objects show significant detail at this magnification. Additionally, compared to many other superzoom compacts, the FZ-28 has a fairly wide aperture (f/4.4) at full zoom, which comes in very handy. Star clusters, in particular, turn out well: I routinely find 11th, and sometimes 12th, magnitude stars on medium-length exposures (around 15 seconds) at full zoom and low (100-200) ISO. This compares favorably with the view in the 100mm scope itself at low to medium power. Here are some images that came out fairly well. In each case I cropped the most interesting portion a bit, shrank the image as a whole, and adjusted the brightness and contrast slightly.
This is the Orion Nebula at full zoom, using just the camera's own lens.
The Double Cluster in Perseus
The Moon (nice easy target -- no long exposures needed!)
The Pleiades |
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FZ28 and Orion nebula
That's a nice photo of Orion nebula. Can you provide the details of the settings you used, particularly ISO and noise reduction. How do you aim the shot as the stars are difficult to see on the LCD?
Orion nebula processing
Since this was a piggyback shot -- camera mounted to the telescope's mount, rather than the telescope's optics -- I used the telescope itself for aiming. That gets me close. I've found that the camera often isn't aligned perfectly with the optical axis of the scope, so at high zoom levels I have to adjust the scope itself a bit to get things right. I confirm positioning by taking a shot at very high ISO (1600) for just long enough to confirm the object is there (for a bright nebula like the Orion Nebula, 1-2 seconds is enough). Then, once I have the object centered reasonably well, I either take a long exposure at low ISO (100-200) or a bunch of short exposures at medium to high ISO (400-800) and stack them. I've largely switched to the second method because there's less risk of losing the entire shot if something goes wrong.
This particular shot is an example of the first type. ISO 200, 30 seconds, max zoom (18x) and max aperture available at that zoom (f/4.4). I cropped the most interesting portion and shrank the image for online viewing; the original image is much larger. I'll have to check, but I believe I left in-camera noise reduction at the default -- I haven't tried changing those settings much. I always adjust brightness and contrast a bit in post-processing; this image is no exception.