Night Photography Workshop

Astrophotography Home Page | TeleVue TV60is Gallery | Celestron HDEdge Gallery

If you are staying in Tekapo and would like to have a go at taking Astrophotography with a telescope, with your own DSLR camera (Canon and Nikon cameras preferred, cameras available if needed) or learn about taking photos / timelapse animations at night, then I am offering personal or small group lessons in Astrophotography. The telescope photography workshops are run at my house here in Tekapo village, which offers a good field of view of the best part of the sky to photograph, shelter from the wind (unless really strong) and means I can pass on a huge saving to you. When you take a workshop with me you pay for the exclusive use of a telescope (no waiting in queues) and my time.

Photography can run every night (see time table below). No camera / telescope experience is required - so even if you have no idea about how to use your camera, this is not a problem. Being able to take photos of the starry night sky or view the night sky clearly is dependent on the weather being clear and free of strong wind. To offer the best possible service to you I only cater for one booking at a time, this allows me to cater for your needs better and means we can be flexiable on what we do. Bookings are essential, but can be made on the day (if not already booked), no pre-payment is expected (as I can only guess the weather) Quality astrophotography does require a long time for each image (this depends on the brightness of the object being photographed) and better results will be achieved with multiple exposures of the same object that have been averaged or stacked together, so a few hours is recommended - but left open to you to decide on - Please let me know your expected time when making a booking. I have 3 Equatorial Tracking Mounts, 1 Camera Tracking Mount and 3 Telescopes available which can be set up in a couple of different ways depending on what you would like to do - Photography with both equatorial mounts or Photography with one mount and looking at objects with the second mount. There is also a camera tracking mount made to hold a camera and camera lens - which is good for wide angle astrophotography - where we frame an entire constellation or the milkyway.

Example photos already taken with the telescopes that I have on offer
TeleVue TV60is | Celestron HDEdge
The most recent images and information that I post about the night sky can be found on my Facebook page


Once your camera has been attached onto the telescope and I have explained how the system is set up and works the remaining time can be inside where it is warm and comfortable - no need to stand around outside getting cold if you don't want to. From inside we can move the telescope to point at different objects that are in a good position to photography and watch as each exposure comes in - and then for me to show you how to get each image (or combination of images) looking there best. Final images will be saved onto your memory card or a DVD for you to take away with you

Bookings and Availability

Price

Timelapse animations of the Tekapo Night Sky