I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D40, sometime in 2009 and began trying it out for astrophotography soon after. These shots of Cygnus were taken in October 2010 and I recall being totally disappointed at its inability to record Hydrogen-alpha emissions. Despite much faster response than film, all the pictures had a very blue-violet cast that is quite unnatural and unappealing frankly. So after some fiddling around using the Nikon capture software, this is about the best I could do to show the nebulosity of NGC 7000 and that around the star at the center of the Northern Cross, Sadr.
Hover over the above image for a closer view
of the area around Deneb and the North Amer-
ica Nebula. For some reason, processing this
image yielded better results than the wider
view.
The wider view at left was obtained using a
50 mm lens, which yields a scale that would
be obtained with a full frame sensor and 75
mm lens. The D40 paired with a zoom lens at
75 mm resulted in the image above, which is
at a scale of a 112 mm focal length lens if
paired with a full frame camera.
Even though the colors of these images are
not representative of the real sky, we can
see very well the many dark nebulae criss-
crossing the star fields, in particular in
the vicinity of NGC 7000 and above it.