Night Sky Photos

I experimented with taking photos of the night sky using the following equipment:

• Pentax K1000 35mm fully manual SLR camera. I've had it for years. (They don't make them like that anymore.)
• Pentax A 50mm F2 lens. I bought it from B&H Photo.
• Phoenix 0.25x super fisheye lens. This mounts onto the 50mm lens to provide a wider angle (with some distortion). I used it for a few of the pictures. I bought it from Sharper Photo.
• Velbon DF-60 tripod. I bought it from Electronics Emall.
• A bulb-style shutter release. I've had it for years. Several times it has either leaked air (allowing the shutter to close prematurely) or gotten stuck (holding the shutter open too long). I should replace it.
• Fuji Superia X-Tra 800 color print film. I bought a 12-exposure roll at my local Ritz Camera. (When I went back to buy another 12-exposure roll, they didn't have any. They said they had stocked it only by mistake.)

The results were O.K. for a first effort. For all the night photos, I used the largest aperature setting available (f/2). Exposure times of about 20 seconds generally worked well.

The fisheye lens distorted stars that were away from the center of the frame and made everything smaller. Still, with patience I was able to pick a lot of detail out of the images.

You can view the results online. Be aware that what you're seeing are scanned images of printed photos saved as JPEGs. The original photos look somewhat nicer.

View the results.

Note: It would make me feel better if you at least try using the Guides feature in the viewer. Really, you might it find half-way cool.

Depending on your browser and operating system, you might be able to use accelerator keys for Next (Alt-N), Prev (Alt-P), and Guides (Alt-G).

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