Nikon D70, tips-hints, anyone?

Guys, my wife surprised me with a D70 as a gift yesterday! (man, do I love her!) 8)
Do any of you have any experience with it, and could you give me some pointers as to what to get, what to do and NOT to do as far as DSO shooting? or maybe some links?

I still need to get me a remote control for it, a T-Ring, and down the road an IDAS LPS Filter...


Thank you for your attention, and clear skies!

Congrats Ivan. I too have been using one for almost a year. Right up to last week when i broke it doing the IR mod. I love it so much i ordered a new body and will be picking it up this week. When i get the old one back from Nikon Repair, i'll go ahead an try the mod again. But i'll be a little less hamfisted about it next time.

Gregs tips are right on. I have mixed feelings on the in-camera NR. I shoot darks and flats quite regularly. I'm currently buiding up a nice library of master dark frames with 10 degree differnetials.

Good luck with it.

BTW - what scope will you be using this with?

Congrats Ivan! I got one for Christmas myself. I've only done some preliminary tests on the sky with it and I did find some issues. The first is that it's red deficient. This might be remedied I think by taking a bigger number of shots than what you plan to use, with longer exposures than the rest, and just using the red channel out of those when you combine them - just like we do with the dedicated cameras. Setting the white balance to cloudy should help too.

The other thing I noticed is that it seems really sensitive in the sodium light pollution band but the IDAS filter should take care of it.

Not all DSOs are H-alpha rich. Those that are not should be better targets.

Finally, a good focusing program is a must. I use Images Plus but there are others.

I've used the D70 more for terrestial shots. Here's some of them:

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/jsuro/terr/terrestrial.htm

Best,

Jose Suro
Tierra Verde, Florida