i need your opinion

hi...i have ad 90 and i want a back up camera for timelapses and some astrophotography that requires many shots and big exposures and i dont want to push always the d90... and i found one d50 used about 70euros with 20000 clicks in very good condition...does it worth such a buy at your opinion? i know that is very old dslr and i dont expect much but maybe it will cover me for such a job...what is your opinion? thank you
 

ChipThome

New member
From the quick research I just did it doesn't appear that the D50 has Time Lapse as a built in option. I would look deeper into the Nikon lineup to find a body that does Time Lapse natively.

Good luck !!!
 

Jonathan

Senior Member
Welcome Papadopoulos Nasos.

The D7100 has time lapse built in. However, in comparison to the overall cost, adding an external piece of kit to deliver that function is nit that expensive. I did it for my D3100 and now don't need it for my D7100.
 
i need only an external shutter release controller...the same that i have with d90...and i take several shots with same exposure and then proccess them in my pc...what do you mean with built in timelapse??as i said i want a second dslr for back up camera split the job at half with the d90...i dont mind if it is not perform like the d90...but i think the price is ok for this dslr at 70euros...
 
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rocketman122

Senior Member
hi...i have ad 90 and i want a back up camera for timelapses and some astrophotography that requires many shots and big exposures and i dont want to push always the d90... and i found one d50 used about 70euros with 20000 clicks in very good condition...does it worth such a buy at your opinion? i know that is very old dslr and i dont expect much but maybe it will cover me for such a job...what is your opinion? thank you

Im guessing you mean long exposures..I agree with Deezey . I think the IQ in that camera wouldnt be good enough for long exposures. grain would be very prominent vs newer cameras. the least would be a D300/D7000. but if youre low on funds thats something else. if youre looking to save some money by going for something cheap, go for the D90 and up.. good luck PN.
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Have a read through this - Nikon D50 Faq

And check out his images - Astrophotography - he uses 2 x D50's one with an IR filter and the other without. It seems to me that a D50 would be suitable for astrophotography but you will have to take into account this
When the camera completes an exposure of
greater than 1sec duration, it automatically runs a median filter on the image.
This median filtering occurs regardless of whether the in-camera noise
reduction is on or off. The exact purpose of the median filter is known only to Nikon but
it seems to be aimed at reducing the effects of hot pixels during long
exposures. Unfortunately, the median filter algorithm seems to confuse stars
with hot pixels, and removes both with equal enthusiasm!

And the fix -
Ar first glance it would seem that Nikons are simply unusable for serious
astrophotography, but for one important discovery: 'Mode 3'. Mode 3 was
documented by Christian Buil, a French astronomer, who also created the name
"mode 3". He noted that if you turn noise reduction 'on', and take a long
exposure image, and turn off the camera during the noise reduction phase, 'Job
NR', with the on-off switch, that the camera will flush the buffer and save the
current in memory image to the memory card, WITH OUT running the median filter,
and the result is a true RAW image, with all the data intact.
 
scott thank you very much...very helpfull lines..and also says that d50 for the period that came off outperformed all the other competitors with the noise levels at that period of time...so it could be good choise if we concider the year that came in at the market.,..
 
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Scott Murray

Senior Member
scott thank you very much...very helpfull lines..and also says that d50 for the period that came off outperformed all the other competitors with the noise levels at that period of time...so it could be good choise if we concider the year that came in at the market.,..
I think it will be ok for what you are wanting to do with it and for that price I do not think you can go wrong.
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
scott thank you very much...very helpfull lines..and also says that d50 for the period that came off outperformed all the other competitors with the noise levels at that period of time...so it could be good choise if we concider the year that came in at the market.,..
I think it will be ok for what you are wanting to do with it and for that price I do not think you can go wrong.

Also take into Max shutter actuations - nikon d50 | Camera Shutter Life Database
 

aroy

Senior Member
One of the methods of doing away with in-camera noise reduction (and this seems to be confined only to CCD sensors), is to take a number of shots at shorter exposures, and then stack them. What this means is that instead of taking a 200 sec shot, take 10 20 sec or 100 2 sec shots, and then use program to merge them. Apart from the fact that this is used regularly by Astronomers, the advantage is that
. The noise decreases compared to long shots
. The sensor remains cooler, hence fewer hot pixels due to heat.
. Any object which intrudes in one frame (a plane or a meteorite) can be deleted by the software.

For this you will need a controller which can be programmed to
. Take a series of short exposures
. Wait for a fixed time
. Take another series

The easiest way is to use Digicam program in your laptop and camera connected by USB.

Some links.
Incredible Focus Stacked Time-Lapse Video of Coral Made Up of 150K RAW Frames
Smeared Skies Made from Hundreds of Stacked Photographs by Matt Molloy | Colossal
 
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