Turn an old telelens and a webcam into a powerfull telescope that is capable of seeing craters on the moon. Next to the webcam and tele lens all you need are some standard pvc plumbing materials (pipes, diameter adapters and endcaps)
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Signing UpStep 1: Needed materials
Here's what you need:
1. A webcam (I used a quickcam 4000 from logitech I still had)
2. A telelens, the more focal length the more magnification you'll get, the lens I'm using here is 80-210mm, you can get them at ebay starting from 12dollars. Many people have old tele lenses left from the analog camera era so there are plenty of them on the web.
3. Some standard pvc plumbing materials: pvc pipes, a diameter adapter to fit different diameters and some end caps. What you need precisely depends on your lens. More details on this can be seen on the next steps.
4. It's not part of the telescope itself, but it is important to have a tripod since the magnification is very large so any movement will ge greatly magnified. So without a tripod as a stable base, you won't be able to use your telescope.
1. A webcam (I used a quickcam 4000 from logitech I still had)
2. A telelens, the more focal length the more magnification you'll get, the lens I'm using here is 80-210mm, you can get them at ebay starting from 12dollars. Many people have old tele lenses left from the analog camera era so there are plenty of them on the web.
3. Some standard pvc plumbing materials: pvc pipes, a diameter adapter to fit different diameters and some end caps. What you need precisely depends on your lens. More details on this can be seen on the next steps.
4. It's not part of the telescope itself, but it is important to have a tripod since the magnification is very large so any movement will ge greatly magnified. So without a tripod as a stable base, you won't be able to use your telescope.
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Any ideas of how to disappear it?
Cheers
With the setup, take a picture of an evenly lit flat surface (you can do this by taking a picture of the zenith in the sky right after the sun has passed the horizon when setting). If you can get several, the better. You'll get a photo layer that represents all the dark vignetting and uneven lighting you're getting (unfortunately, you wont be able to fix the lens distortion without some more complex work that I'm unable to explain cause I don't know).
You can 1. do it the hard way by shoving your image and this FLAT FIELD image into Dark Sky Stacker (which is a free astrophotography stacking program... you'll have to look up how to calibrate an image using a flat field image).
2. the easy way by using photoshop or Gimp, and using this FLAT layer on top of your photo and subtracting the FLAT from the image, probably through layer blend effects (see: multiply, add, subtract, hard light, soft light, overlay, difference, exclusion)
either way, using non fitting ccd to a lens that fits a different focal length than how you set it up is gonna force you to have to be creative with your solutions. Just a friendly tip from a learning astrophotographer :)
Would this lens and setup work for this purpose? If not what lens would do the trick?
Woops. Spoiler.
I did the microscope USB Microscope and you did the macroscoe .
I like your's event better then mine! - you get 5 stars from me!