About me

chris-profile
I started with astrophotography in June 2012, basically when I ‘discovered’ the amazing results amateur astrophotographers can achieve nowadays with relatively simple (!) equipment and a normal DSLR. I had been interested in cosmology for years already and was active with (wildlife) photography as a hobby as well. I started to combine these interest areas by photographing the night sky, DSO’s in particular. Having this background in ‘regular’ daytime photography I focus a lot on the aesthetics of the resulting images in general and pay particular attention to composition and to ‘soft’ processing with attention to colour preservation in stars.

“I’d rather spent my money on trips to great dark skies than buying more expensive equipment that I can only use under light polluted skies.”

I live in the Netherlands, so light pollution and the weather is always a struggle. I have a spot I go to some 30 minutes drive away from my home, which is relatively dark at zenit (at least the Milky Way is visible there) but still not very good.
Twice a year I go on an astrotrip to darker skies (SQM 21) with some friends to either Hohen Woos (Germany) or Lalobbe (France), both around 4 to 5 hours drive from home.
Next to this I also went to La Palma last year and was lucky to have 9 clear nights there. This year I decided to go to Namibia, to astrofarm Kiripotib. Trips like these give me access to truly amazing skies and in my opinion nothing can beat real dark skies; I’d rather spent my money on trips to skies like this than buying more expensive equipment that I can only use under light polluted skies.

I started out using my Nikon D7000 for astrophotography mainly because I already owned this camera. Now, 3 years later, I still stick to using DSLRs for astrophotography. This is mainly due to the excellent value for money you get with DSLRs and the great results you can achieve under good dark skies, even with unmodified camera’s!

Clear Skies!

Contact me: c.vdberge (at) gmail (dot) com

 

Acknowledgements and publications

APOD
NASA Astronomy Picture Of the Day

Astrobin
Picture of the day

Amateur Astronomy Magazine
composition




BBC’s Sky at Night

  • October issue, 2015 – Hotshots Gallery: A Sagittarius Triplet
  • November issue, 2015 – Hotshots Gallery: Pipe Nebula

Sky & Telescope

  • October issue, 2016 – Helix Nebula
  • Equipment:

    Mounts and tripods

    Telescopes and photo lenses for astrophotography

    Cameras; DSLR and guiding 

    • Nikon D600 Modified
    • Nikon D600 Monochrome
    • Nikon D7000
    • Nikon D5100 Modified
    • Lacerta MGEN

    Astrophotography Software (on Mac)

    • PixInsight
    • Stellarium
    • qDslrDashboard
    • RedScreen

    Mobile Apps
    PhotoPills
    SkySafari+
    Clear Outside
    Aurora Fcst
    WeatherMap+

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