I Tried a $500 Smart Telescope. The Pictures I Took Speak for Themselves

Among the dozens of hobbies I've collected, photography is the most consistent. It's my version of a journal -- I may have chosen a career in writing, but I avoid it in my downtime. I've captured roughly 50,000 images in the 18 years since I bought my first digital camera, a Fujifilm FinePix S700. These days, I take most of my photos on a Google Pixel 8 Pro, but I dust off my Nikon DSLR (and even the S700) from time to time for specific projects. I've used all of my cameras for astrophotography with varying levels of success. The main issue I faced was a total lack of tools to track the motion of stars during the long exposures. Astrophotography is hard but it doesn't need to be. Enter the $500 DwarfLab Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope, a feature-packed compact telescope I've been testing for the past two months. Not only has it changed my perspective on astrophotography without a bulky telescope and camera adapter setup, but it has excellent tools for other kinds of photography. Excellent t ... Read full article.