Re: [APML] Skill and Joy

[Matt BenDaniel <matt@starmatt.com>]

Jeff,

All you need to produce beautiful astroimages today is a $300 Dobsonian,
an eyepiece, some dark skies, paper and charcoal (or berry juice).  I've
seen some stunning hand-drawn planetary and lunar images which compare
favorably with high-quality film images.  Before the advent of film,
astronomers did serious science that way.

You can take beautiful star trail shots with a $50 broken SLR and a rock
for a "tripod".  Really.

And barn door mounts do work and cost almost nothing build.

You have to ask yourself why you do it:
* To create pictures for your walls or web site
* The implicit appeal of a mastering a succession of challenging tasks
* Friendship with other imagers
* To show and talk about at gatherings
* The joy of learning (and teaching) new techniques
* Appreciation for the beauty and science of the natural universe
* The refreshing feeling of being out under the stars at night, maybe
see a fireball or aurora or moose<g>
* Opportunity to give prints and cards to friends and family (IC1808 for
Valentine's Day?)
* The reward of building and configuring the equipment (e.g. Rowe's
optics, Schmidling's cameras)
* Some basis for an "inner life"

Matt
http://starmatt.com

Jeffmight@aol.com wrote:
> 
> It's funny the "haves" set-up is $13,000 and the "have nots" set up is $6000.
> Some of us work on a much lower budget (The "less than have nots"?)
> As far as money goes you can just set up a camera on the hood of your car and
> take a star trail astrophoto or even just pull out the leader and point the
> film up to the sky at night. As far as to how cheap you can go - there is no
> limit, (Berry juice painted on cave walls to represent star patterns is quite
> inexpensive.)
> If you want to impress non-astronomers, a tripod and barn door mount will
> work fine.
> If you want to impress astronomers an equatorial mount will be needed
> If you want to impress astrophotographers, you will need $$$ and you will
> never be finished upgrading and improving your equipment and technique. And
> anyone with alot of money, average intelligence, better than average
> motivation and infinite patience will eventually be able to repeat any photos
> you have taken.
>        Even though I (again) come off as cynical I have the utmost respect
> for anyone at any level of astrophotography. Instead of being parked at a
> barstool or attached to a TV remote, they are outside trying to gather the
> light of the universe onto a tiny bit of film or CCD chip in order to show it
> to others. Fighting about who's best is just the general competitive side of
> us all showing through.
>                          Jeff

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