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But for astrophotography (except where you can't stack) they're completely outclassed by pretty much anything digital. A DSLR of any type, or a digital compact, or even a $50 webcam will outperform any film camera.

So the signal to noise ratio means nothing?

There's a reason amateur astronomy became MUCH more popular around when digital imagers became commonly available.

And prices had nothing to do with this? The prices of digicams became a lot lower than the price of a film camera that was good for astrophotography. Also the prices of telescopes are such that many more people can afford one. You can go down to Ritz Camera and buy a 'scope for less than $200, heck their website lists 3 under $100. One with a tripod and Autostar Controller is $300.

A cheap DSLR on a stick will let you image objects that are out of reach for all but a really patient expert with a several thousand dollar equatorial mount and a film camera.

I didn't check all of them but one 'scope Ritz has has an equatorial mount and Ritz lists it as $150. They also have a universal mount to mount a camera to the 'scope for $50. Next is the camera, Ritz lists the Canon EOS Elan 7E SLR Camera with a Canon 28-90 Auto Focus Lens for $450. Together that comes to $650, less than $700 with sales tax, and tfa did say around a $1000. Then the $300 remaining will pay for at least 15 rolls of 36 exposure film and the development and scanning of the film.

I've got to try star trails again with a DSLR. You can shoot them in chunks, but then you get little discontinuities where the shutter closes and then opens again. Still, if you did it fast enough. Maybe if it were automated.....

I don't know what DSLR you have but have you checked to see if there's a cable release for it? Maybe it will help with this, I don't know if it will or not. If not you can still use it in other low light areas. Myself, I shoot in a number of situations, broad daylight to night tyme. The only type of shooting I haven't done, at least in years is macro or wide angle, oh and infrared. I'd like to get a fisheye lens. I also need to get at least one ND, Neutral Density, filter Not for astrophotography but for daylight shooting.

The advantage of the D70 is that I will be able to mount one of these on my D70 when I get one this summer, so basically, I get 5 extra stops of shooting latitude (f 2.8 compared to my 24-120 that does 5.6, plus VR offers 3 extra stops worth of shot steadyness)

Ritz Camera is selling it for $8000, and gives its list price as $9000.

Except the current price for a 4GB microdrive is $499.99

Not too many people are willing to put down that much cash for one game.

Considering the PC version has a 6.5 GB disk space requirement (I can't find published requirements for the PS2 version because it comes with the hard drive) I think that a laptop drive would be the only option.

This is of course assuming that there is an option for a harddrive. The article at BBC makes no mention of one, and I can't get to the other article.

It may be a good idea to spend a bit extra for a warranty like this if you're doing this kind of photography.

Actually, IBM (now Toshiba) microdrives are distinctly cheaper than solid-state media of the same storage capacity- at least in the 2 and 4 GB sizes that they're selling these days. A quick check at Pricewatch shows 2 GB microdrives (in Compact Flash packaging) selling for as little as $195, while the cheapest solid state 2 GB CF is $430. 4 GB sizes are not listed at Pricewatch, but the price advantage for Microdrives is likely to be even greater there. When I checked at Ritz Camera, the 4 GB microdrive was only about 50% more than the 2GB, while the 4 GB solid state CF was more than double the price of 2 GB.

Just go buy a 2 or 4 gig Compact Flash card.

They read/write significantly faster and have no moving parts. They're also removable etc. etc

Ok, so the 4 Gigger is a bit pricey ;-).

Just go buy a 2 or 4 gig Compact Flash card.

They read/write significantly faster and have no moving parts. They're also removable etc. etc

Ok, so the 4 Gigger is a bit pricey ;-).