GUIDE
YOUR
CAMERA
TO
GREAT
SHOTS
A variety of mounts and techniques
can help you create stunning
images. Which one is for you?
by Mike Reynolds
62
A ST R O N O M Y • MAY 2018
The photographer
captured Barnard’s
Loop in Orion over
two nights from
a plateau about
25 miles east of Globe,
Arizona. He used an
AstroTrac tracking
mount on a heavy
tripod as his base.
He mounted his QSI
583wsg camera on an
autofocus mounting
bracket and attached
it to a Pentax 67
medium-format lens.
NICHOLAS CLARKE
LIKE MANY OF TODAY’S ASTRONOMICAL
imagers, I started astrophotography by taking simple
star and planet trail shots, and photographing the
Moon through my telescope. This was during the
film era, when most amateur astronomers considered
color emulsions advanced, not to mention special
spectroscopic and astronomical films and techniques,
like cold cameras and film
hypersensitization.
As I progressed though more
detailed and complicated photo-
graphic techniques, acquiring a
mount that accurately tracked
the sky was the next step. This
took the trails out of my expo-
sures and gave me nice wide-
field images of the night sky.
Today’s digital techniques are
similar to the ones I used in the
film days; the advantage is that
you can control with your cam-
era many of the settings I had to
deal with by using different film
types or in the darkroom. As
with film, prints, and the dark-
room, digital processing is
another story in itself.
General interest in wide-field
camera-lens imaging has