Hello, I tried using the Nikon 950 to take pictures of objects in the Milky Way in pitch darkness and came out with this shot of an object known as M8... I was very impressed by the Nikon 950 being able to take shots at shutter speeds of 8 seconds... and have this quality without the need to cool the camera down.

See http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/3944/what.htm

Questions: 1) How does the oly 2000 compare to astrophotos with exposures taken at 16 seconds?

2) is there a software hack on the internet that will allow the Nikon 950 to expose to 8,12,16 seconds..

3) can the Oly2000 exposure of 16 seconds be stepped to 12,16 seconds?

Regds Allan

-- allan teo (allan_teo@hp.com), June 28, 1999

Answers

Hi- Don't know the answers to all your questions, but I'll give it a stab.

1) At 16 seconds, it's pretty noisy. You may have some luck though, taking a "black" exposure, and subtracting the fixed-pattern noise from the actual images.

2) Don't know of one...

3) Not to my knowledge - you just get factors of two: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16.

Hope this helps.

(One reader emailed me samples of images shot out his backyard at night, couldn't find it just now when I went looking though. :-(

Hope this helps!

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), July 08, 1999.