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Tried astrophotography with an old DSLR and got better shots than my fancy telescope

I bought a used Canon 60D off Craigslist for $200 and figured I'd try taking pics of the Orion Nebula with just a standard 75-300mm lens on a tripod. No tracking mount or anything fancy. I stacked about 50 short exposures in DeepSkyStacker and couldn't believe what came out - you could actually see the nebula's shape and color. My $800 telescope with a smartphone adapter gave me worse results every time. Learned that aperture and sensor quality beat magnification for deep space stuff. Has anyone else had luck with just a camera and lens for nebula shots?

3 comments

3 Comments

johnson.river13d ago

Stacking software is black magic too" - that hit me. Its kinda like how I used to think I needed the most expensive chef knife to cook a good meal, but really its just technique and knowing how to use what you got. I shot the Orion nebula with a beat up T3i and a thrift store lens, stacked in Sequator instead of dedicated astro software, and got this hazy blue cloud that looked like a painting. We get sold on the idea that buying more stuff fixes problems but really its the process and patience that matters most. Same thing happened with my coffee setup - spent hundreds on a fancy grinder but my old blade grinder with a sifter works just as good now that I know what im doing.

paul_ramirez13d ago

Yeah I was the same way honestly. Used to think you needed all this expensive gear to get anything decent. Bought a cheap star tracker and everything before realizing my old Nikon D5300 with a kit lens actually pulled in more detail on Andromeda than my whole rig did. The sensor just collects light way better than those small phone sensors people use with telescopes. Stacking software is black magic too, makes up for not having a mount. Kinda embarrassing how much money I wasted before figuring this out.

smith.elliot13d ago

Stacking in Sequator was my turning point too, made my old DSLR shots actually look like space.