Thanks for all of the insite. The most frustrating thing to me is to pack up and travel a couple of hours only to have cloud cover. I know patience is the key, but if I lived in Wyoming...

I am looking for a good place near Tampa FL to view night sky events. I am in Clearwater and sometimes the beach is ok but not great.

I’m going to order my anaphylactic glasses today!

I use digiCamComtrol and am very satisfied with the results. There are limitations but it is FREE (but you can contribute if you like it). It is a great way to ‘get your feet wet’ to see if you may want to purchase a more sophisticated program.

Thanks, good advice. Did the same thing with macro lenses, got extension tubes first.

Is it possible to mount a DSLR to a Meade 226 refractor? Just starting in astrophotography and this is all I have. Given the weight of the camera Would I be better off just using a smartphone?

I am using a “free” (donation accepted) program called ‘Digi Cam Control’. I decided to accept some of the Awkwardness of the program to see if I liked tethering. I DO like it and now may buy a better program. That being said, I am very pleased with DigiCamComtrol. For what I paid for it it is doing a great job.

Thanks for the post. This is one of many reasons I look at UHH everyday.

The only reason that I shoot both modes is that I use a Tethering program for portrait work and the jpeg files allow faster screen acquisition as the program does not have to process them as wIth RAW.

I have decided to try Macro Photography but am starting out on the cheep, cost about. So i bought a set of auto extension tubes, cost about thirty bucks. Manufacture is SHOOT and the source was Amazon. They are a set of three tubes; 36mm, 20mm, and 12mm. They can be used individually or stacked in any combination and allow the Autofocus function on my Nikon D3100 to work. The build quality is good and i am satisfied with the purchase. I think it is a good entry level step. If I get GOOD maybe I’ll buy a REAL Macro lens.

Buy what you can afford after factoring the cost of a screen calibration system (spyder etc). I like Apple products mainly because ‘Airdrop’ is cool.

Cool! Could use it for light stands also.

Some say potAtos some say paTAHtos...🎼🎶🎶

This is my first choice. But a bit of a drive from Naples..

I would submit a photo of a can of Campbell's soup. Hey, it’s worked before.