What Polaris can do for you?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- Welcome to my review of the Benro Polaris, a motorized tripod head I backed about a year ago with hopes of replacing my telescope setup with just my DSLR and Lenses.
The Polaris is still in beta software but I am already convinced this product will be awesome when the software is finalized. Im happy with the results I was able to get on a winter night and cannot wait till summer astro nights again!
It can handle some deep space and some wide field astro and it is built really well. Benro did and is doing a great job with this product!
Keep up the great work, Benro, I cannot wait to see what software updates you are able to roll out!
Well done for getting this out fast Blaine. As a backer waiting for my number to come up, this is very encouraging.
Re your point about struggling with tracking on your Celestron scope, don’t forget that a 70-200 lens is going to be a lot more forgiving than the longer focal length of a ‘proper’ telescope. You didn’t say which celestron you have, but the focal length is likely to be upward of 500mm, possibly substantially more. I started shooting the night sky at the end of 2010, initially with camera lenses before migrating to telescopes onto motorised equatorial mounts being controlled from a laptop. It took time to learn & dial in new equipment as I built up my imaging rig over time. I don’t see Polaris as a replacement for my main imaging rig, but a partner to it. I’m likely to use Polaris along side my main imaging rig once that is up and running working through its automated imaging sequence through the night, that’s when I’ll use the Polaris to shoot less demanding, wider field stuff
Aligning a telescope with polaris is indeed something that requires a lot of practice ....
Thx for sharing man !!! Great photowall and nice 3D printer setup ;)
Thank you I can’t wait to print some more puzzles and mini figures. Any cool prints you have tried and love?
I'm a backer and waiting for my unit to come. Can't wait to play with it. The software will improve with time and I expect bugs.
IMHO, the KickStarter complaints stem from other projects and the total lack of accountability KS takes to those that take your money and run (little or no updates or plain scams). There is absolutely no recourse for us backers (and I do realize it is always a gamble). I've been burned three times by projects that never produce and do not update (gear tracking, battery and rear-side filter projects - all for photographers). I will no longer back any project from independent people... and only from known companies (like Benro, Peak Design, etc.).
Yeah there is way too much complaining for this project. Benro Did really well and even launched additional hardware to expand the feature set. Im glad I took it to Hawaii in all honesty. I used it at the rental and nowhere else but It was helpful for some simple Astro captures.
The downside of being one of the first you have to put up with all the bugs! Just got mine and about to use it for the first time, wish me luck 🤞🏻
How did your experience fair?
Thank's for the review. Since you already have your Polaris, I have a question. How fast it can rotate. Benro says that Polaris can track people/objects. Did you try it? Does it work? Is it fast enough to track e.g., animal (say to photograph deers remotely)?
I haven’t timed it but tilting movements are rather fast can likely tilt fully for full range in maybe 20 seconds or so however panning seems to be slower at over a minute for full 360 degrees. It is responsive though to the app over WiFi which is nice. Currently this does not have people or object tracking but they can always add that with a software update. I don’t think I will try to photograph deer remotely with it but that’s not to say it can’t. It is a little noisy though so much so that my dog started growling at it one evening. I will say it is more focused on precise movements over fast movements. And it is designed to be precise with a heavy camera and lens attached. If you see how the knobs spin rapidly when moving that axis you can tell that it is designed for precise movements as opposed to fast with how the gearing is setup.
It's not going to track close objects quickly. It can't slew fast enough for that. Perhaps distant animals. But don't expect subject recognition and tracking via the Benro app. The software just has one center AF point now, with no magnifcation for focusing and no focus peaking. This is software from a company that makes tripods and heads, after all.
Thanks for getting out this information. I too am waiting for my unit to ship. I am new to astrophotography and own a Sky Watcher pro pack. I have struggled with the polar alignment process and, although I have been able to get nearly 2 minutes exposures with no star trails, was excited about the Polaris’ ability to automate the polar alignment process. This would save me quite some time getting started. Can you comment about the polar alignment process? Is it automated or does it require visual identification of Polaris in the night sky and significant manual input to get started? If the latter then it would be disappointing since that was the impetus for my decision to back the project. Your comments are appreciated. Best regards from South Florida.
You know it’s funny you bring this up. Alignment when it works reliably(still rather beta software) is a breeze and is truly a two step process. You use your phones compass to sync with the sensors within the Benro Polaris and when that is done you tell it to point at a star in the sky you recognize (not the North Star Polaris, not enough variation to make an accurate alignment. When choosing a star more variation is best) and then you use the live camera feed to be more precise than just compass and gps and that interface has been fixed up nicely it has a digital zoom up to 16x that you can also set focus during. So really is just two rather simple steps to get it aligned. This assumes your tripod is leveled easily too. You can even align off of the moon and planets but they seem less accurate to me just slightly though. It seems to track well likely really well once aligned. I definitely cannot wait to get to a dark sky location soon. When they get their software ironed out and stable this thing will be as amazing as their campaign claimed.
@@blainemillerphotography Thanks for your response. Looking forward to using it. Hopefully it arrives in time for MW season. Cheers
I have that shirt yo
Hi! Is it possible to do a full tracket panorama of the milky way? Can you set the lenght of each shot (for example 2´ each) and config to do automatically two rows of star tracking with that config? thanks!
Yes, and you can do star tracked Astro Panoramas where you start with a star alignment and then take the night sky panorama or my quick and easy way of just using regular panorama mode with long exposure shots. It is a proper Move Shoot Move hardware so it waits while shooting and then moves to the next position before firing the shutter again. Having a screen preview makes it nicer than my Syrp Kit.
Will this work well with my Nikon D3100 or will I need to bump up to the D7200 or higher. Which have Bluetooth better screen and processor.
Both are on the Benro Camera List: www.benro.com/en/polaris-compatible-list.html but the D3100 doesn't support live view which is a very nice feature I use a lot with my Canon 90D. the D7200 does support everything though. Polaris uses a usb cable to read camera data so the use of Bluetooth would not be needed with the D7200 thanks to live view being supported.
Hello my astro kit is due tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing how long I can track starts without trailing
I was able to do well with 5 minute exposures
I got mine some days ago.
First test were not successfully done. Move the point of view to a position and tell the app to do a 4x4 set of shots. It starts always first to move about 70°, the shot in this wrong position.
No idea why.
The app is still partly in Chinese unfortunately
The panorama Pro mode ironically is the one I find the easiest to use. Definitely give it a try if you have a chance. I explain it in my Panoramas video I just released.
i am thinking about backing. i think they turned back on the go fund me or kickstarter backing option? or it is still available..?
I think if you visit Benro Polaris website it takes you to their indigogo which last I checked in December it was still open however it’s likely still a few weeks to months out due to backers still waiting to receive theirs but doesn’t hurt to get in line I suppose.
Can you do accurate long-exposures with tracking? Is there an accuracy limit?
Its accurate enough for my 200mm lens on an APS-C sensor at f/2.8 but I sadly don't use this for scientific data acquisition so I don't have a quantifiable measurement but I have captured 4-5 minute exposures with it that look sharp for photography but that requires a good setup and environment and I haven't always had the patience to get it setup that precisely before shooting so, is it capable of great accuracy, yes, if you have the patience for it. basically this is heavily dependent on manual leveling and magnetic interference being kept to a minimum.
Damn, retail $2500 here
Currency conversions can be rough for sure.
I think you want to love it too much. The hardware is solid, but the design has a lot of dumb details. The astro bracket blocks the LEDs. The knobs are essentially useless since you can't effectively move the head with them - and there's no clutch. There's no spirit level on the head. Software sucks. Documentation sucks. The astro folks took over the campaign and clearly that's your focus, but I want it primarily for wide field timelapse with motion. Don't thank Benro until they deliver. There have always been astro mounts you can use with a camera for deep sky. The Sky Watcher AZ-GTi, for example, which is an alt-az mount but can be used as an equatorial mount. My experience with my Polaris so far is that it can't find astronomical objects. Perhaps I'm not grasping their calibration routine, but goto doesn't point anywhere near the selected object...by several tens of degrees. I'm hoping the bugs will be ironed out and the software improved. I hate that so many functions require the camera to have a direct connection. There are better apps for camera control, and the interface on this one is very poor.
The astro bracket blocks the sd card slot not the LEDS. The knobs do let you move the head but only when it is turned on and rather slowly I might add. I do wish it had a level too. The software isn’t finished yet and they are still working on it. I felt their documentation was fine I am just rather Techy so I find even poor instructions easy to follow. I demoed the wide field move shoot move and it is going to work great for me in that regard too. The first beta it was not able to find astro because it could not align but they fixed the alignment issues in my case with beta 3. Anyways it is an early product and Benro has a lot to fix and add in the software but as a software engineer myself I see only progress so far and I know they will keep pushing out updates over the next few months. I bought it for astro because I love photographing astro but I also love landscape and wildlife photography so I’m sure I’ll find more uses for it too. I do want to love it because I spent good money on it and it is already proving viable even with beta software. With stable software in the near future this equipment will be even better. I’m coming at this from a different perspective and I made my review off of what I have available to me and I have no reason to believe Benro won’t be able to deliver on the features they set out to achieve with the Polaris.
It’s really handy reading both your responses to this scope. I’ve been considering the Polaris and the AZ-Gti . I’m really hoping to see some good shots come out if the Polaris, it’s potential is huge but I just haven’t seen any good shots from it yet. In your experience can the Polaris track stars smooth enough for longer exposures? I guess a wide angle lens shouldn’t be too hard but I’m curious to see how it handles 200mm plus.
The AZ-Gti looks great too but I notice they don’t seem to want to people to use it as an equatorial mount. I guess that’s down to accuracy issues too but it seems more likely to be able to track smoothly given that it’s only actively rotating on one axis.
Thanks again for this great feedback guys!!