Ive seen terms like afocal photography, prime focus photography, and eyepiece projection photography… What is the difference and which should I do?
Afocal photography consists of taking an unmodified camera focused at infinity and taking a picture through the eyepiece. Mounting the camera to the scope itself is helpful with this method, but for short exposure times images can be obtained simply by holding the camera up to the eyepiece. With prime focus photography, the camera lens is removed from the camera, the eyepiece is removed from the telescope, and the scope itself serves as the lens for the camera. Because alignment is more important, to use this method the camera must be mounted to the telescope (which generally is a tracking telescope). Eyepiece projection photography again uses a camera with the lens removed, but this time uses an eyepiece in the optical path. This results in higher focal length, and greater magnification. Magnifying the image results in less light falling on a given area, which translates to a need for longer exposures than prime focus photography given the same target. Also because of the higher magni
