OMD M5 astrophotography review at The Roving Photographer.

I didn't know about the 'live time' feature - that sounds really useful.

 

The Live Time refresh is REALLY cool. I've only played with it a bit, but you can watch the scene being slowly painted and stop the exposure when it looks good.

As someone who spent many a chilly night fumbling with his 5D only to get slightly misfocused and poorly exposed images due to all the guesswork involved in shooting with an SLR at night, the EM5 looks like a great nighttime camera, especially with improved noise performance over prior Four Thirds cameras.

 

i liked the shots & review but wasn't overly impressed with the images he put out

 

I don't think he's a serious astro tog. Certainly you wouldn't use the timer on top of the 7d to time image exposure - just use a timer remote for £20 off eBay

 

Thanks all - that's my blog! I'm glad that my ramblings were interesting to folks here :smile:

arad85 is correct, I'm not a serious astrophotographer. It's just something I mess around with when I'm able to. I enjoy it, in large part because it gives me a good excuse to go outside and stare at the night sky.

dannat, my biggest problem with astro shots is sharing them online. They just don't render well at all at smaller sizes and end up looking like dark, blurry things. I posted some the other day and included links to larger versions, which I think helps. But anything less than full-size, I think it loses some of the impact.

I tried to do a series of real-world reviews on the E-M5 when I got it; this was one that I hadn't planned for, but worked out. (The whole review series got a little out of control and dragged on way too long...)

 

It's 1.59 plus 0.99 GBP postage actually.
Just got mine yesterday , no time to go out so try a bit of indoor star trails.
<IMG width=1200 src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8449/8026112218_eb13ae5079_h.jpg">

 

At that price, I assume you mean a remote release like this: http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?itemId=220803744928&index=1&nav=SEARCH&nid=73501545609

I mean one that you can set to interval time like this:
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?itemId=200482598797&index=2&nav=SEARCH&nid=66711338634

Although it is only £12...

Much much easier than the manual one as you just set it for the correct exposure length, interval and number of frames and then go and have a glass of your favourite tipple whilst it does its thing... Also easier to use dedicated star stacking software if you can.

 

The cheap one can do continuous / interval shooting as well. The photo above is 120 photos blend together, 60 seconds per frame. I set the camera to Sequential L, 60 seconds, press shutter button and slide it to hold, go watching tv for 2 hours or just let it shoot till battery dies.

 

So can the expensive one. You just aren't limited by the setting you make on the camera...

 

i messed around with my OMD last weekend a little for some star shots, and was somewhat disappointed. This is coming from experience with both Canon and Nikon DSLR's.
5D was pretty good. 5DII was quite good. D700 and D7000 were both great IMO.
OMD is back in the pretty good category, i think most limited by lens selection.

Keep in mind, most of what i've done is static tripod-mounted wide-field shots, trying to get milky way and the like.
The noise characteristics of the OMD are just not ideal, or i haven't found the right settings yet.

 

I was fooling around with some night shots of the milky way in August and came up with these shots. I mostly varied the ISO but left the fstop at f2 with the 12mm Oly lens and time exposure at 15 seconds or 20 seconds.
Night Skies - a set on Flickr

 

Well if you will live/visit somewhere that has no light pollution....

That's a great set

 

wow these are fantastic. now i can safely buy an e-p5. thanks for sharing!

 

The other day i decided to try a few star shots. Shots at 1600iso, f1.8, with my OMD and 17/1.8 at about 20 seconds seemed to work. No where near perfect yet, but it's fun getting into it: