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Keep Canon 300 f2.8 lens or sell and get telescope?

Started 1 week ago | Discussions
BigBen08 Veteran Member • Posts: 7,472
Keep Canon 300 f2.8 lens or sell and get telescope?
1

I retire next year and will have more time for hobbies. I'd like to try my hand at astrophotography. I'm mostly interested in nebula and galaxies. Not so much planets.

I have the Canon 300 f2.8 IS II that I no longer use. I could keep it for astrophotography or sell it and put the money towards a telescope. Since I know almost nothing about astrophotography, I'm not sure what to do.

I also have the Canon 6D and R5. Would these be useful for astrophotography?

Besides the telescope, tracking device, and a bunch of accessories, I'd like to keep the total cost at $5,000 USD, or less.

Advice?

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3dpan
3dpan Contributing Member • Posts: 734
Re: Keep Canon 300 f2.8 lens or sell and get telescope?
3

BigBen08 wrote:

I retire next year and will have more time for hobbies. I'd like to try my hand at astrophotography. I'm mostly interested in nebula and galaxies. Not so much planets.

I have the Canon 300 f2.8 IS II that I no longer use. I could keep it for astrophotography or sell it and put the money towards a telescope. Since I know almost nothing about astrophotography, I'm not sure what to do.

I also have the Canon 6D and R5. Would these be useful for astrophotography?

Besides the telescope, tracking device, and a bunch of accessories, I'd like to keep the total cost at $5,000 USD, or less.

Advice?

f/2.8 is very useful, especially for nebulae, dust clouds and similar faint "buried-in-noise" signals.
Very hard to find a telescope that fast.
300mm is also very useful, more than enough for a lot of nebulosity especially if you have a crop-sensor camera.

Fast optics mean shorter exposure times, less demand on your polar alignment, and more images collected in any given imaging time.
Don't underestimate the amount of imaging time that my be required, (see example below)

I can't speak for the optical quality of the Canon 300/2.8 and its suitability for astro, but looking at the test results from LensTip, I would say resolution across the frame, CA levels especially at f/2.8 and f/4, and coma levels, are very hard to beat for astro.
Personally I use the Nikon 300/2.8 because I already had it.

You will get a whole chorus from others who say the speed of your optics is not important because you can use auto-guiding to compensate for longer exposures/tracking problems.
And I say "Sure, if you have the extra imaging time needed, and are happy with the extra complexity associated with auto-guiding".

Also, I recommend a quality tracking mount. It will cost more, but will never (?) become obsolete, and will make achieving high quality polar alignment so much more enjoyable.

As an example I include an image of the Blue Horsehead Reflection nebula.
A stack of 164 x 2-min frames at f/2.8, 135mm on m4/3.
(More than 5 hours of imaging, over three nights).

Reflection nebulae are fainter than for example Emission Nebulae, and require deeper imaging techniques.
Reflection nebulas are actually made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse.

PS,
I took early retirement about 30 years ago, abandoned city life and moved to a dark sky area.
Best move ever. And I discovered astro photography too.

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Jack Tingle
Jack Tingle Senior Member • Posts: 1,526
Re: Keep Canon 300 f2.8 lens or sell and get telescope?
3

BigBen08 wrote:

I retire next year abynd will have more time for hobbies. I'd like to try my hand at astrophotography. I'm mostly interested in nebula and galaxies. Not so much planets.

I have the Canon 300 f2.8 IS II that I no longer use. I could keep it for astrophotography or sell it and put the money towards a telescope. Since I know almost nothing about astrophotography, I'm not sure what to do.

I also have the Canon 6D and R5. Would these be useful for astrophotography?

Besides the telescope, tracking device, and a bunch of accessories, I'd like to keep the total cost at $5,000 USD, or less.

Advice?

Try it out.

Tripod mount aimed at Polaris. Take a 60s exposure & see what you get. Polaris minimizes the tracking needed.

Check "Nebula Photos" on YouTube for how-tos.

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grsnovi Veteran Member • Posts: 3,030
Nebula Photos YT Channel
1

You should probably watch a few of this guys videos. He has a couple that ought to interest you.

https://www.youtube.com/@NebulaPhotos

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3dpan
3dpan Contributing Member • Posts: 734
Re: Nebula Photos YT Channel
1

grsnovi wrote:

You should probably watch a few of this guys videos. He has a couple that ought to interest you.

https://www.youtube.com/@NebulaPhotos

Thanks, just coincidentally I found his video on processing the Blue Horsehead nebula.
Very informative for me.

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grsnovi Veteran Member • Posts: 3,030
Re: Nebula Photos YT Channel

3dpan wrote:

grsnovi wrote:

You should probably watch a few of this guys videos. He has a couple that ought to interest you.

https://www.youtube.com/@NebulaPhotos

Thanks, just coincidentally I found his video on processing the Blue Horsehead nebula.
Very informative for me.

Glad to have been some help.

I think the OP would find several that speak to his exact question.

My problem is that between my wife and I we have 2 telescopes between us. Hers is the big one but she hasn't kept it up and the GoTo and drives are toast. I've been thinking of remounting the scope.

That would likely lead to hooking up a camera to the scope...

...which would then lead to...

...it never ends!

- Gary

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3dpan
3dpan Contributing Member • Posts: 734
Re: Nebula Photos YT Channel

grsnovi wrote:

3dpan wrote:

grsnovi wrote:

You should probably watch a few of this guys videos. He has a couple that ought to interest you.

https://www.youtube.com/@NebulaPhotos

Thanks, just coincidentally I found his video on processing the Blue Horsehead nebula.
Very informative for me.

Glad to have been some help.

I think the OP would find several that speak to his exact question.

My problem is that between my wife and I we have 2 telescopes between us. Hers is the big one but she hasn't kept it up and the GoTo and drives are toast. I've been thinking of remounting the scope.

That would likely lead to hooking up a camera to the scope...

...which would then lead to...

...it never ends!

- Gary

I fully understand your predicament.

For that reason I limit myself to a camera/lens combo and restrict my targets to relatively large ones (nebulae etc) in the Milky Way.

Cheers,
Alec

 3dpan's gear list:3dpan's gear list
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82Virago Regular Member • Posts: 367
Re: Keep Canon 300 f2.8 lens or sell and get telescope?
2

I am a fan of starting with what one has. I am shooting with as canon 300mm f4, would definitely using a 2.8 if I had one.

I would lean to getting a decent mount first. I am tracking on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer, but with the 300 2.8 I would go to a more robust mount. A plus will be your budget allows for a pretty decent GoTo mount. That makes finding targets easy.

If you really get the astro bug, you can then look deeper into a scope and accessories.

In the mean time. Go some where decently dark. Set up to get M42, Great Nebula in Orion.

Choose 1600 ISO on your Canon body. Shoot 2.5 seconds  x  30, 40, 50. Frame up M31 Andromeda Galaxy same thing. I did M31 40 x 3.2 seconds at f4.  as my first attempt. It is in no way spectacular, but got me going. You could do this tomorrow.

Then I got the Tracker. Still shooting with the 300 f4, but adding 1.4 teleconverter. I did recently get a small refractor, but have not imaged with it yet. I control the camera with a tablet running DSLR controller, or My Mac laptop with Canon's DPP.  I stack in deepsky stacker on an old P.C laptop.

Cheers

ChrisBeere
ChrisBeere Regular Member • Posts: 316
Re: Keep Canon 300 f2.8 lens or sell and get telescope?
3

BigBen08 wrote:

I retire next year and will have more time for hobbies. I'd like to try my hand at astrophotography. I'm mostly interested in nebula and galaxies. Not so much planets.

I have the Canon 300 f2.8 IS II that I no longer use. I could keep it for astrophotography or sell it and put the money towards a telescope. Since I know almost nothing about astrophotography, I'm not sure what to do.

I also have the Canon 6D and R5. Would these be useful for astrophotography?

Besides the telescope, tracking device, and a bunch of accessories, I'd like to keep the total cost at $5,000 USD, or less.

Advice?

The Canon 6D, R5 and Canon 300 F/2.8 are awesome for astrophotography.

Check Roger Clarks gallery for some useful examples with the 300 F/2.8 IS II

https://clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.astrophoto-1/

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OP BigBen08 Veteran Member • Posts: 7,472
Thanks...

Thanks for all the advice. For now I'll hang on to my 300 f2.8 and see how it works for astrophotography.

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FF Pro
FF Pro Senior Member • Posts: 1,499
Re: Thanks...
1

I have that exact lens too. It’s not going anywhere. I’d get a go-to mount. I’m looking at the Skywatcher GTi and EQ6-R Pro. Grow into it and nothing major lost.

The 300 is hard to beat. It’s the best lens o have ever owned or shot.

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