Canon adaptor for telescopes

[andy10]

Hi.. besies photography, I love star gazing and have a very handy

telescope.. Looking at the cost of canon lenses beyond 1000mm I was

wondering if someone sells canon mount adapters so that I could mount

my canon EOS on the telescope and occasionally capture those

beautiful celestial objects.. are such adapters available.. Any

suggestions regarding the vendor and price are highly appreciated..

thanks in advance

[chi_wang1]

I believe what you are looking for is a T-mount adapter and a T-ring. The adapter fits on your camera and the ring fits on a telescope. Granted the problem is finding a telescope with an appropriate T-ring. Try doing a www.google.com search for "adapter telescope canon eos" (minus quotes). That should give you a few hits to start looking around.

[NK Guy]

As noted, you need a T mount adapter. Have a look at:

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<A HREF="http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-manual-lenses/"> http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-manual-lenses/</A>

[barmijo]

I found my adapter at adorama.com for about $20 a couple years ago.

[canon man]

Yep, Adorama, has the adapters. BTW, any body know the quality of such shots taken through telescopes. I have been thinking of doing some astro photography myself.

[bobatkins]

Depends on the telescope. The camera's just a box to put the film in.

[mclemens1969]

I suggest you look at Hutech/Borg components. Very nice solution. You need three parts:

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1) <A HREF="http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/borg/parts/html/7425.htm">part #7425</A>, which slips into your telescope and screws onto this:

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2) <A HREF="http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/borg/parts/html/7000.htm">part #7000</A>, which converts from the above listed part to the below listed part:

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3) <A HREF="http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/borg/parts/html/5005.htm">part #5005</A>, which is just an EOS lens mount ring.

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This solution is affordable, lightweight and very well built. Thats how I took pics of these <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/photo/353911&size=lg">sunspots</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/photo/357130&size=lg">Moon</A>.

[john_engle1]

"... BTW, any body know the quality of such shots taken through telescopes. I have been thinking of doing some astro photography myself."

 

Generally speaking telescope lenses are not on par with camerea lenses. In particular telescope lenses are optimized for clarity in the center and sacrifice clarity towards the edges, whereas camera lenses are designed with edge-to-edge clarity in mind. This is especially true on inexpensive telescopes. You'll need to step into some seriously expensive telescopes to start mimicking camera lense performance. Chromatic abberations or common on all but the most expensive telescopes. Other camera lense technologys like APO, various coatings, fluorite elements, UD elements are rare in telescopes that are "affordable". Additionally "lens speed" is _REALLY_ expensive in Refractor style telescopes, and Refractors tend to have better images that Reflector telescopes. Refractors tend to be more expensive than an equivalent Reflector. Catadioptrics muddy the waters, but decent catadioptrics can be just as expensive as a good Refractor. The real key to telescopes is not magnification, but apereture. If you are looking for the razor sharp optics found in high end camera lenses, then telescopes, at least those that we could either afford, or gain access to, will not be on par with camera lenses. Especially if you compare camera lenses to similarly priced telescopes. The bulk of telescope technology is tied up in light gathering capabilities and robust sturdy tracking mounts.

 

Something else to note, is that manual camera bodies tend to be preferred for astrophotography (the Olympus OM series is the body of choice for some reason), due to the _LONG_ exposure times involved (hours). Since most modern SLR's draw power to hold the shutter open, using a modern SLR can present a problem, as the batteries can be be drained during a long exposure. Additionally, with modern SLR's, many do not offer a mechanism by which you can have an exposure of longer than 30 seconds. Look for a remote shutter release that has either a timer or a "locking" feature. Be aware that long exposures at night can present lower temperatures and this can hamper battery performance. Manual bodies employ a lockable shutter release cable.

 

Orion Telescopes has some good basic information on telescope models, and astrophotography. They also sell adapters that go between camera bodies and telescopes (t-mounts). I've been pleased with their service. http://www.telescope.com/

 

You'll also need a tracking mount for your telescope in order to take pictures of celesial objects, otherwise you'll get star trails( see: http://www.photo.net/astro/star-streak).

 

The best place to start photographing celestial objects is photographing the moon. It doesn't require a telescope, but you'll probably want to start with a 400mm lens (or longer). Since it's always a sunny day on the Moon, use the sunny 16 rule and bracket around that.

 

Check out http://www.photo.net/astro/intro for the basics of astrophotography.

 

Check out: http://www.scopereviews.com if you want some decent opinions on (moderate to expensive) telescopes.

 

Good luck!

[mclemens1969]

Great response by John. Yes it's always a sunny day on the moon but bracket in order to bring out interesting features along the terminator. I think "Lunar f/11" is a better rule in general than "Sunny f/16" for the moon.

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If you buy a quality fluorite doublet telescope, or a triplet lens design like TMB or Astro-Physics (or the new Takahashi), you wont have any problem with a good, color corrected field over the size of a 35mm neg.