Camera for star pictures?

[winlonghorn]

Hello everyone. I was wondering what would be a good camera with stabilization that would also take great space pictures (stars, moon, etc..)? I appreciate any help with this. Thank you.

[winlonghorn]

Anyone know what would work well?

[mjs1973]

Welcome to the Forum. Any camera is capable of taking pics of the stars and moon. A DSLR with a long lens will be needed to get a decent pic of the moon. I would suggest 300mm or longer.

What type of star photos are you wanting to make? Star trails can be done with just about any camera that will allow you to use a long shutter speed.

The more info you can give us, the better advice we can give you.

[winlonghorn]

Ok, I have a kodak easyshare and it doesn't even come close to getting good pictures of the stars and moon. I just went regular pictures that are a bit closer up. With the kodak, I only see dots for the moon and stars when taking the pictures.

EDIT: I mean very tiny dots. Nothing that is noticeable unless you look very close.

[Dylan8i]

id suggest a hubble telescope.

it really depends what kind of pics you want. for thigns liek star trails you'll need a camera that can have long shutter times (mins to hours) or if you want close up moon pics somewhere are 2000mm seems to work great (from the pics ive seen) or get a telescope and a P&S that can attach to it.

[mjs1973]

Check out this thread:

Total Lunar Eclipse February 20th

There are lots of pics of the moon starting on page 2 of the thread. Most of them were taken with a DSLR and a telephoto lens. 200mm on up. Most of them are cropped to show more detail. If you want to get close, you need a long lens, or telescope.

[SmartWombat]

OK with a Kodak easyshare you're going to have to cheat
Use an astronomical telescope, and mount the camera so that it looks through the eyepiece.

People use this digiscoping technique for wildlife photos too, with ordinary telescopes, and it can get some amazingly good results from a small relatively cheap camera.
Of course it uses a rather big and possibly expensive telescope instead