Great beautiful pictures.

Go for it. The D700 is a great camera. I have a D200 that is still a great camera. Lots of D700's on ebay from top rated sellers for less than $400.

Here's a quick test shot with the 645Z in a dimly lit room. Only light is from closed venetian blinds on a grey overcast afternoon. This is a jpg SOOC, no processing. iso 51200, f3.5, 1/60 sec., hand held. Pentax 35mm manual focus film lens, focused using the zoom in live view. Color set to color reversal film emulation. Had to resize the image from 27MB to 19.6MB to post here.

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I also have the Pentax 51MP MF 645Z. I got it used with just a 16,000 shutter count and the 55mm autofocus lens on ebay about 2-1/2 years ago for $3200 with shipping. The quality of the images is the best I have had. There are a couple of downsides. First it is a heavy, big camera, and the lenses are big and heavy as well. The camera and lens weigh about 5 pounds. It's not a camera to shoot one handed. Second is it is not mirrorless so you really hear it when you press the shutter. Third it only takes 2K video, and because it doesn't have an anti-aliasing filter (it doesn't have it in order to increase sharpness) it is very susceptible to moire in video. On the plus side the Pentax 645 manual focus film lenses are dirt cheap and good quality (like the old Nikon film lenses). The low light capability is also excellent.

Thank you.

I found the Nikon 50mm f1.4 to be very sharp at f4.0, with very accurate auto focus. Here's a shot at f4, iso-100, 1/500 sec at about 15 inches away in daylight, with the Nikon D200. I barely saw the insect, it looked like a black gnat or fruit fly. When I cropped to 100% I got this surprise.

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I understand that, but f1.2 only comes in manual focus. However it is the fastest Nikon lens.

That's a great shot. My keeper rate is about 10% in daylight!

The 50 f1.2 is a low light beast. I just took this shot in a dimly lit room, no lighting, just the 5PM overcast light from one window, at iso 400, f1.2, shot raw on my D200, boosted the exposure a couple of stops in Photoshop. The room was so dimly lit I could barely focus through the viewfinder.

Below is also the jpg with no processing.

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The only way to go faster is the used manual ai-s nikkor 50mm f1.2. I have it and it's a great lens at a great price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/393851455795?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D237146%26meid%3D035db0328b5c4b068f315ea4df30eab0%26pid%3D101195%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D373895006906%26itm%3D393851455795%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DSimplAMLv9PairwiseWebMskuAspectsV202110NoVariantSeedWithTargetEncode%26brand%3DNikon&_trksid=p2047675.c101195.m1851&amdata=cksum%3A393851455795035db0328b5c4b068f315ea4df30eab0%7Cenc%3AAQAGAAACIPo50cw23bf%252F6x3llwp7uqQYMSZ7F%252Fi96WSXXXOQbTeOSGyEMf2tLa1dtuh3yrj5emmcomvFUCFpGptjlwj5%252BQ2k6omqiUMLmjMeiABuUwt7553E%252FhBcEVbGpDwpFvEORBuBSaoXXNpCHcEgHix2GVz32AmGh7qZCsO84REt8j1LK1V%252FXdbYzISJ0mmh3f%252B3yBWxdj6hDI8rG23GySKzS38KmKjOOLGge%252F774nNnZSegDzBt2BmJAjUXzygM4UDvkNTTtS7xGMOft36GW78Clb4cSV62NTGjD1l%252FArsr%252Bjh1S1x7%252FLjuc5NgKFOR5JC62jq8xsJG4TwKKmqy0WtbQ4ix0NV5wkW6dEBVgvdjXiz1RoqU4v2%252BlcNZ8O2CucWOxgbR2j0MDK2tGees6Mx4lzmQS3ViLTu%252BK9srHfMw%252FKqqNdkwtAOTMK3VY%252B0L5nnx0MEGYj9XVH8geuZkPBbRnQWq1xQopic8gNe5IkHhsHAQ7Ag%252BjFyr32pyzm86Z9sVv1HCYL9xqGsM1JThLarHCEfYbPNRYpP15QHViPlICgyDQ7khyLyRINkqbfrDuzYoLPfmSLU1Q4yLSpSnP01cvab%252F%252BIocRhJAuWT5p%252ByLZqcvlRf9EZi%252Bh9Pn6TZeOAxliKcGbvo%252FqC55kzPgVJEujdfIEvgoH5XmXxlhRcfEIKMb6KbxbLJk%252BEiMo7gSrje09YOD6llBxjTbQ8fPQtgCxis%253D%7Campid%3APL_CLK%7Cclp%3A2047675

What Nikon camera model are you using?

I don't have experience with the Questar but I do have experience in astrophotography and microscope photography.

Looking up the Questar it appears to be a $6,000 tabletop telescope weighing 7 lbs. that has a built in tracking drive to track the stars and planets. It would seem that adding any sort of tripod would defeat the purpose of the scope which is high performance telescope in a highly portable and compact package.

With both astrophotography and microscope photography a dedicated telescope camera which attaches to the eyepiece and a laptop to focus and take stills and video is the way to go. This setup would facilitate sharp focusing, and taking stills and video with no camera shake. The camera settings, exposure, shutter speed, white balance, gamma, etc. is all controlled from the laptop.

In the attached pic, the little blue box sitting on the eyepiece is a dedicated astrophotography camera, connected to my laptop with a usb cable. I also used the same camera and laptop setup with my microscope.

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Thank you Bill.

Maybe it's just me but it looks to me like an out of focus, accidental firing of the shutter button.

Thank you.

I highly recommend it. Many of these cameras with both the 10-30mm lens and the 30-100 mm lens are available on ebay form highly rated sellers for about $250, or with just the 10-30mm lens for about $150. I have not had problems with the live view in sunlight. I hold the camera at eye level about a foot in front of me. It's great for nature shots because it can fire off a burst in a couple of seconds if you want to "spray and pray". The one inch sensor is better than smaller sensors on bridge cameras, so you can crop to 100% resolution and still retain clarity and sharpness. For small birds I used the J1 camera with the Nikon FT-1 autofocus adapter (about $250 new) and a used Nikkor 55-300mm zoom (about $250 on ebay). With the FT-1 adapter the camera uses center point auto focus, which is fast and accurate. With the crop factor the 300 zoom gives an equivalent focal length of 810mm. And the whole kit weighs about 2 lbs so I can walk and shoot with it easily.

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