Night sky photography (1 Viewer)

[Omie Jay]

I've always had this fascination with the starry night sky and the moon etc, and i was wondering what kind of camera would be needed to take good quality pics of the night sky?
I'm not looking to buy, cbf spending money on that, just wondering, because we have a 6MP digital camera and i have a 3.2MP cameraphone (k800i) which doesnt take good pix of the night sky

(also i wish i had a telescope in my room, and i wonder if holding a camera to the telescope's eyepiece would work...)

 

[Kwayera]

Anything that you can set the shutter speed and has a decent sensor will be fine. What kind of camera is the digital?

 

[Omie Jay]

olympus c-60, 6.1mp, 12x zoom or something, dad bought it so it's probably some el-cheapo model.

also, i know nothing about photography, but im guessing it'd need really sensative light receptors or something to pick out the pinpricks of star light amist the dark.
Doesnt shutter speed reduce image blur? (but like i said, i know nothing about photography)

edit: oh right, exposure is also dependant on shutter speed

 

[Grissom]

A tripod and something with bulb mode so you can take long expsoures to get star trails.

 

[BlackDragon]

To be able to photograph things at low light you really need to be moving away from compact cameras and towards the SLR type of camera. Anything with a good lense should be fine, but because of the types of exposures you will be doing you will need a camera with a good processor. Obviously the SLRs have this, but even the compact cameras that are larger in size and more the amateur photography would be able to do this. My camera is an Olympus SP-590UZ with a 26 mm lense, just look that up and you will see the kinds of cameras I am talking about. You will also need a camera with manual settings so that you can adjust the exposure and aperture and stuff. And yep, like previously said, you need to put it on bulb mode and keep it really still to be able to get anything from starlight photography. Umm, but anyway, just look that camera up and that's the kind of stuff that can start taking good night sky photography.