Making a Nikon P1000 stable to be able to take moon & star shots

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

I hope with the new regulations on posting video's via youtube I have not broached any of the new requirements. It seems the world has gone mad. Anyway I am not looking at this world but beyond. Using a camera as opposed to a telescope. I bought 2 new camera's. 2nd hand actually. A lovely little Sony RX100 MK7 for holiday shots etc. Then a great big heavy Nikon P1000 with a wacking great 24 to 3000 mm zoom + 1 +2 +3 giving a digital 12000mm. The problem with such a camera is keeping it still. I have done some mods that make it much more stable including a remote control so I do not touch the camera. The link is just to show how I did it. Again I hope I have not contravened any of the new regs on postings. I will soon know if it gets deleted. Regards all.

Steve.

Making a Nikon P1000 more stable

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

My take on making a large zoom camera more stable

[Ed DuffnerParticipant @edduffner79357]

A very neat solution Steve, nice job!

Would have been nice if Nikon had included a tripod mount into the lens barrel.

Ed.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Good video which is hardly likely to worry our moderators. Now your problem is the very high speed of celestial objects, which gets worse the further you are from the polar alignment. The only way around that is to mount the camera on a motorised computer controlled telescope mount.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

No problems with that. Well done!

The Skywatcher 'Star Adventurer' will open the door to tracking for longer shots.

There is actually an affordable and apparently very good, if less flexible, clockwork alternative:

http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/reviews/mounts/omegon-minitrack-lx2-tracking-mount/

This is how they used to do it in the old days!

Neil

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

If ir works for you that is fine but…… The centre of gravity of the whole assembly is a long way behind the the support point of the tripod head. In my mind the whole thing is just too flimsy to give a stable support. You don't show your tripod but I wouldn't mind betting that it is not that rigid. For 12000mm lens you need absolutely rock solid support. A normal photo tripod can't do it.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by norman valentine on 25/06/2020 15:55:33:

[…]

You don't show your tripod […]

What was that three-legged thing I saw in the video then ?

[ just after 3min 45sec ]

Admittedly it’s very much NOT the sort you say he needs.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 25/06/2020 17:49:22

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

Whoops , yes, you could call that a tripod but that is what I was talking about. It is far too flimsy, you need to get a substantial tripod, mount the camera near to its balance point and then you will get shake free pics. Trust me, I am an expert.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

[Enough!Participant @enough]

Wonder if any of the massive, wooden tripods that were available from war-surplus dealers in the 50's and 60's are still around.

Ideal for something like this I should think.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Thanks for the comments. I originally used my Son's tripod but it was very flimsy. This one is a cast alloy & quite firm. It is a Manfrotto model, well see the picture. Other than that I can confirm it is not bad. Before doing the mounting mod it was so front heavy , nearly impossible to stay on an object when zooming in. It does not dip any more. I do however have the remote control for it so I do not touch the camera when taking shots. I would love to get a star tracker motor drive but ( More blooming money). I did manage to photograph a sparrow on a chimney about a mile away. Before zooming in you could hardly even see the chimney stack. I do know the limitations of such a camera though, only being 16mp.

Norman the balance of the camera at half zoom is exactly where the fixing point is. Or am I missing something. ??? .

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Some pics taken tonight with the flimsy tripod.

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

Steve, in your video, when you are pointing at the mount to show the centre of balance you need to take into consideration the top plate of the tripod. In fact your thump is pointing at the position that you should balance the camera around. Norman

At least that is how it appears to me, I could be wrong.

Edited By norman valentine on 26/06/2020 06:54:48

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Posted by norman valentine on 26/06/2020 06:35:54:

Steve, in your video, when you are pointing at the mount to show the centre of balance you need to take into consideration the top plate of the tripod. In fact your thump is pointing at the position that you should balance the camera around. Norman

At least that is how it appears to me, I could be wrong.

Edited By norman valentine on 26/06/2020 06:54:48

A bit confused here. The pic is where the centre point of the camera balance is, & that is where I have mounted it to the tripod. Ignore the alloy thumb wheel above it, that is for the slide to adjust.

Steve.

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

Yes, that is my point. I believe that it should balance directly above the large round shiny bit some way in front of your red line. At the moment it is hanging behind it which will encourage vibration.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Posted by norman valentine on 26/06/2020 17:09:55:

Yes, that is my point. I believe that it should balance directly above the large round shiny bit some way in front of your red line. At the moment it is hanging behind it which will encourage vibration.

Hi Norman. When setting this up I did quite a bit of balancing to get a happy medium, as you can see with the camera on full zoom it becomes front heavy. By trial & error I came to the centre point where the camera was best balanced. See picture on full zoom. I have tried sliding for & aft & came up with the position in now.

Steve.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 25/06/2020 15:38:24:

No problems with that. Well done!

The Skywatcher 'Star Adventurer' will open the door to tracking for longer shots.

There is actually an affordable and apparently very good, if less flexible, clockwork alternative:

http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/reviews/mounts/omegon-minitrack-lx2-tracking-mount/

This is how they used to do it in the old days!

Neil

Neil I had a look at the tracker. Nifty little thing. Not sure about on the Nikon though. The camera weight changes a lot when zooming as you know. Maybe Santa might bring me something this year. No hurry & will give me time to gain some experience with the kit. Regards.

Steve.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

With a 3,000 mm lens, I would be thinking in terms of developing a means of fastening the camera to something like a brick wall or a concrete pillar, to minimise ANY chance of movement.

Even then, beware of passing lorries causing vibration!

The moon shots are good, but a micron, over 26 million miles, is going to be quite a distance, so don't stop yet

Howard..

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Thanks Howard for the comment. Not had much luck with cloud cover the past couple of weeks. I will have to get myself a star chart so I know where to look.

Steve.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Sad to say, your pictures look great until you compare them with the view through a real telescope, even a cheap one.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Posted by old mart on 26/06/2020 22:23:37:

Sad to say, your pictures look great until you compare them with the view through a real telescope, even a cheap one.

Aw thanks old mart you always say nice things.

Steve.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

A friend, who built a small observatory in his garden, mounted his telescope on a four side concrete pyramid, to minimise vibration! So the telescope sat on about half a ton of concrete!

Not everyone is able to avail themselves of such thing.

We have to do the best that we can, with what is feasible.

Keep up the good work.

Howard

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I did get permission to make a concrete 'bird bath', with a removable top…

But as the mount would need to be realigned after placing it in position anyway, I decided to stick with a tripod.

No-one realises, but there are now three well-established little divots in the lawn that speed things up a little.

Neil

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Bandersnatch on 25/06/2020 22:32:41:

Wonder if any of the massive, wooden tripods that were available from war-surplus dealers in the 50's and 60's are still around.

Ideal for something like this I should think.

Many people praise wooden tripods, they should be easily made by anyone on this forum!

Neil

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by old mart on 26/06/2020 22:23:37:

Sad to say, your pictures look great until you compare them with the view through a real telescope, even a cheap one.

That's not fair, I have seen far worse taken with far better equipment. This is an image taken with my Nikon bridge (not DSLR) camera:

 

Steve, to get results like that you take short videos to get between 100 and 1000 frames.

You can these use various free programs to stack the images and achieve results that will blow Old Mart's socks off:

For pre-processing (not essential but does make everything easier, it will crop your images to an area of interest or centre a planet/the moon and crop images to size:

PIPP Planetary Imaging Pre-Processor

Stacking software:

Autostakkert!3 image stacking

Sharpening (actually Registax will do everything and may be agood place to start, but I find its workflow confusing as it steps you through things so if it goes wrong you have to start again from scratch. If you drop a single, stacked image into it it goe straight to the sharpening stage and you can just play with the sliders):

Registax astro image processing software

For many images I find Astra Image is the best sharpening software, but it does cost $42 (and is well worth it, in my view, but I do a lot of astrophotography).

Astra Image processing software

Neil

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 27/06/2020 11:17:16

[Author]

Posts