I have a D1 and have done some astrophotography with it. I did not purchase
it for this application, but it's available.

I've had some good luck with exposures out to about 1 minute using dark
frame subtraction. The D1's longer duration exposure performance is
exceptional when compared to point and shoot type digital cameras (I also
own a coolpix 990 and have used a Kodak 4800) and even the D30 (CCD versus
CMOS sensor). But it's not in the same class as cooled CCDs.

I've gotten some passable nebula pictures with it as well as lunar,solar and
planetary.

Two less than obvious drawbacks to using the D1:
The D1 does not have mirror lockup. It is possible to program a delay of
about 1 second between the mirror slapping up and the shutter releasing, but
it is very difficult to restabilize the telescope in this period. In
general, I have gotten good results with shutter speeds faster than 1/500 or
slower than 2 seconds or so.
The other issue is dust collecting on the surface of the CCD. Because the
lens is off the camera, the innards of the camera is exposed to much more
contamination than was probably intended by Nikon. Not all of this dust can
be removed from the surface of the CCD without sending the camera back to
Nikon for cleaning. It's not an issue with the astro pictures, but is really
annoying when you take 'normal' pictures during the day.

Another potential issue is that the camera you were referring to (5.47
Mpixel) is actually a D1X. The D1X uses a CCD with a very strange aspect
ratio and requires post processing to get to 5.47 Mpixels. I would be
concerned that the post processing would eliminate the possibility of
successfully doing a dark frame subtraction. You would need to check with
Nikon about this.

Leo


----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 6:19 PM
Subject: [M]: Nikon D1


> Has anyone tried shooting astro pics with a Nikon D1. It's a 5.47
Megapixel
> digital camera that uses standard Nikon lenses. A friend of mine, with
more
> money than brains, is considering buying one and we were thinking about
> getting the proper T-adapter and trying it out on the scope. It's got a
> hefty $5,000 price tag for the body, but I wouldn't object to hooking it
up
> to my LX200.
>
> Doug
>
>
>

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