Olympus OM-D E-M5 II good for astrophotography

[Rutgerbus]

This new model from Olympus contains a four-third sensor of 16MP but is capable of taken images of 40MP.

Therefore, the camera quickly takes 8 shots in a row altering the sensor by 0.5px every shot. Then, combines the 8 frames to one......sounds a bit like a "Drizzele" function or what Tony Hallas calls "Dithering".

So maybe this feature "canceles out" collor noise from your photo giving the perfect black background for your astrophoto's...

Was just wondering....but prefer my Full frame sensor over the four-third one I guess.

Any thaughts on this.

 

[starman1969]

Sounds interesting. I shall have to look it up.

 

[JochenIs]

I dont see how you would make use of the combine 8 pictures mode in astrophotography. You would usually have the shutter open for as long as possible without getting the stars to leave trails. So you can gather as much light as possible.

For pictures of the moon or very bright objects it is definitely going to help increase the resolution. But for dark things like the milky way i dont see it producing better pictures since you would have to decrease the exposure time to 1/8th for a single frame.

 

[Rutgerbus]

I dont see how you would make use of the combine 8 pictures mode in astrophotography. You would usually have the shutter open for as long as possible without getting the stars to leave trails. So you can gather as much light as possible.

For pictures of the moon or very bright objects it is definitely going to help increase the resolution. But for dark things like the milky way i dont see it producing better pictures since you would have to decrease the exposure time to 1/8th for a single frame.

Totally agree with that actually.

 

[JimLindner]

I dont see how you would make use of the combine 8 pictures mode in astrophotography. You would usually have the shutter open for as long as possible without getting the stars to leave trails. So you can gather as much light as possible.

With a tracker I believe 40mp mode would work. If you set a 15 sec exposure the camera would take 8 pictures for a total of 2min which become combined into 1 40mp raw photo. So it would slow exposures for stacking by a factor of 8 but yielding a higher mp photo. The only thing I am not sure of is if there is a exposure time limit like the 1600 ISO limit.

But for dark things like the milky way i dont see it producing better pictures since you would have to decrease the exposure time to 1/8th for a single frame.

Only without tracker.



--
Regards Jim
We All Need Water!

 

[Tristimulus]

Usually lens abberrations and tracking errors are the limiting factors for astrophotograhy. Using a 135 mm lens quite often turbulent air blur the stars (yes the atmosphere can be rather lively here).

Guess stacking (for deep sky objects) and Lucky imaging (using proper focal lenght and lots of short exposures and software like Registax for the moon and the planets) still is the way to go. Enough pixels ensure full resolution and lots of artificially created pixels do no good.

Dithering and Drizzle are different concepts. Drizzle is more like pixel shifting and Dithering is moving the entire sensor a lot more to ensure that hot pixels do not overlap - and then using median stacking to cancel out hot pixels and cosmic ray hits.

For ordinary photography pixel shifting might be a plendid idea.

 

[W5JCK]

I dont see how you would make use of the combine 8 pictures mode in astrophotography. You would usually have the shutter open for as long as possible without getting the stars to leave trails. So you can gather as much light as possible.

For pictures of the moon or very bright objects it is definitely going to help increase the resolution. But for dark things like the milky way i dont see it producing better pictures since you would have to decrease the exposure time to 1/8th for a single frame.

Totally agree with that actually.

 

[RustierOne]

This new model from Olympus contains a four-third sensor of 16MP but is capable of taken images of 40MP.

Therefore, the camera quickly takes 8 shots in a row altering the sensor by 0.5px every shot. Then, combines the 8 frames to one......sounds a bit like a "Drizzele" function or what Tony Hallas calls "Dithering".

So maybe this feature "canceles out" collor noise from your photo giving the perfect black background for your astrophoto's...

Was just wondering....but prefer my Full frame sensor over the four-third one I guess.

Any thaughts on this.

While this camera may well be a good one for astrophotography, there are a number of other factors limiting your results beyond just raw sensor resolution. Such things as lens quality, tracking and guiding accuracy, etc. will have more of a bearing on results versus megapixel rating of the sensor. That could even be a detriment due to the larger files resulting. Just some thoughts off the top of my head.