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I spent $200 on a star tracker and honestly wish I hadn't
Everyone talks like a star tracker is the only way to get decent deep sky shots, but after three nights fighting with polar alignment I just went back to stacking short exposures from a fixed tripod. I get 90% of the same result without the headache. Has anyone else ditched a tracker and been happier?
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phoenixk6410d ago
...so a buddy of mine went all in on a star tracker, spent like three hundred bucks on a used one. He borrowed it to me once and I spent a whole night just getting frustrated trying to level it on my wobbly tripod. Ended up going back to just stacking a bunch of 30-second shots from a fixed mount and got a better result than anything I did with his tracker.
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felixm2910d ago
Yeah, "wobbly tripod" is the real enemy there. @phoenixk64, what kind of mount were you actually using for those 30-second shots? I've found that even a cheap, halfway decent tripod makes a bigger difference than people think. Like, I can get clean 25-second subs with my $60 tripod, but my buddy's old $20 one from a garage sale shakes for three seconds after every shutter press. It's wild how much the gear underneath your gear matters.
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wells.christopher9d ago
You had me rethinking things @phoenixk64, I used to think you had to spend big on a tracker to get good shots but now I'm starting to see the appeal of just working with what you've got.
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