For beginning astrophotographers seeking a more economical approach a barn door mount is a simple way to track a camera for wide angle pictures.
Barn door camera mount.
You can buy fancy motorized equatorial mounts for telescopes and cameras but it s way cheaper and more satisfying to build your own simple barn door tracking mount using a long bolt or threaded rod as a drive screw.
It seems that these cameras consume battery power in order to hold the shutter open.
It is a simple but effective way of eliminating the star trail effect of night sky photography without expensive equipment.
This image of the scorpius milky way was captured from costa rica with a dslr camera and the simple hinge tracker mount described here.
M6 rod 90mm with wingnuts and washers for the tilt axis in the camera mount.
Known generically as a barn door tracking platform it s easy to make and works well for camera and lens astrophotography.
A barn door tracker also known as a haig or scotch mount is a device used to cancel out the diurnal motion of the earth for the observation or photography of astronomical objects it is a simple alternative to attaching a camera to a motorized equatorial mount.
High end astronomical telescopes usually have what s called a clock drive which slowly rotates the telescope allowing for those long exposure.
A barn door tracker is a camera attachment camera mount used to capture long exposures of night sky images.
The barn door mount i built took only a few hours of effort and cost only a few dollars over the tripod and camera ball mount i already had.
M8 nut and bolt for mounting the cam mount to the main body.
But a camera is only part of the equation continue reading build a hinge tracker for astrophotography.
You mount your camera on the door then aim the hinge straight at the north star polaris.
There are several designs out there the one i made is called a curved sector drive because the threaded rod it uses is curved.
Some of the modern cameras can pose a bit of a problem though as a result of their electronic shutters.
Barn door geometry the simplest barn door drive consists of two pieces of wood hinged at one end.
The mount described here provides one of the easiest ways to track the night sky with your camera.
This view of the eta carinae nebula was shot in costa rica with a camera riding on the tracker described here.
The camera mount approx 300mm of 22mm x 44mm meranti a hard wood well harder than pine anyway a brass 1 4 20 modified machine screw for mounting the camera.
Any 35mm camera that allows for holding the shutter open via a bulb or time setting can be used.
