A New Direction

[OhNo]

It took a while, but the night sky wasn't looking promising (aka a write-off). As not to waste any opportunity I decided to attempt my first go at a Nightscape image. I mounted at Canon 1100D on a spare dovetail a proceeded to stick it on the CGEM. Ummmm, this first error! For what semi-clear sky that was available I couldn't get things square. The image was taken a s slight angle.

Research earlier in the day had me believing that ISO 3200 would be good enough. With the ISO set at 3200 I took a 10 second image (to prevent trailing). Even at these settings I did have minors trails. I re-set the ISO to 6400 and took another 10 second image. I captured the image using APT, and did some messin' around in StarTools.

In Summary, I have a boat load of learnin' to do about this interesting part of the hobby. Will read here and the net to fine tune the error of my ways!

RRRRR! Can't load the image in this post!

[OhNo]

Nope, I can't find a way to get the image to stick to my post. Oh, well, wasn't all that great anyway.

[Gordon]

Here's some tips on posting images. viewtopic.php?f=29&t=23

If you need help, let us know.

[OhNo]

Nope, tried from 2 different computers and NADA.

No biggie. I already had a member here download one of my images from here , slap his name on it without even giving me a mention for taking it..... So I'll keep my stuff to myself.... No big deal. :Stop:

[JayTee]

Your next option, at this point, is to create a gallery and deposit your images in your gallery.

Cheers,
JT

[OhNo]

Nope tried all the skins.

[bladekeeper]

Brent, testing image upload using your permissions as per my PM reply.

[OhNo]

Single___MG_9649 (Large).JPG

Single .jpg shot at ISO 6400 for 20 seconds, f/5 24mm with Canon 1100D. Camera was mounted on a larger AltAZ that came with a 120mm refractor. It was so cloudy that no stars were visible naked eye.

To make the mount fully adjustable (for round 2) I mounted a 90 degree flip head of a small camera tripod on the the AltAz head. Yup you guessed it the sky turned really soupy for test 2 with the mod to the tripod. Shot some horizon shots to test. Infinite adjustment to all angles!

******For what it's worth .tiff file images seem to be unable to be loaded loaded to the site, *****

[JayTee]

Hi Brent,

Glad to see you are finally able to post images.

A tidbit for your nightscape images: since you are using your Canon 1100D (T3) and it has an APS-C (cropped) sensor we have amended the rule of 500 down to the rule of 300. Basically, take the FL of your lens (say 30mm for wide-field) and divide that into 300. This will give you the number of seconds before you start to see star trailing in your images. So 300 ÷ 30 = 10 seconds.

Cheers,
JT

[OhNo]

Thanks JT, but here ya got my on my short suit, math. Or I should say determining what the FL of this lens (stock with camera) 18-55. I am zoomed out as far as possible, then focused...... but have no idea of how to figure out the focal length! :veryconfused:

[JayTee]

Thanks JT, but here ya got my on my short suit, math. Or I should say determining what the FL of this lens (stock with camera) 18-55. I am zoomed out as far as possible, then focused...... but have no idea of how to figure out the focal length! :veryconfused:

Look at the top of your 18-55mm lens and you'll see a little white bar, read the number immediately adjacent to it. That is your focal length! No cyphering needed!!!

Cheers,
JT

[OzEclipse]

******For what it's worth .tiff file images seem to be unable to be loaded loaded to the site, *****

TIFF is not a web friendly file format. Files are huge. Web forums such as this can also apply size limits to files. So it could be that the file was just too big or that it won't accept tiff.

JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, GIF are the preferred file formats for web display.

Joe

[OhNo]

I had re-size the image to 577kb, so it was the .tiff format that screwed me up!

[OhNo]

MW S 9757 (Large).JPG

While Astropheric said 50+% cloud cover that was NOT the case. While it didn't look great when I first started, it cleared off and the seeing and transparency was the best it's been since the snow left. Low to the South is always a issue for us up at 52N, so last night was a rarity. Noise in the RAW images has me scratching my head....

I was set up on the compound AltAz mount, and kept in mind JT's "300 rule". The shot above was taken at ISO 6400 for 10 seconds. The 6400 ISO is the upper limit of my camera, and I am a bit disappointed in what I captured. This morning I re-arranged the swivel on to different dovetail so I can use my CGEM. Will try again with just tracking to see if I can stretch my exposure time, and if I can't get the result I'm looking for I can incorporate guiding.....

Opinions are always welcome.

[JayTee]

Remember the rule of 300 is just a guideline. For aesthetic reasons if you don't mind short star trails but want a brighter more detailed image, then definitely use longer exposures.

Cheers,
JT

[KathyNS]

Thanks JT, but here ya got my on my short suit, math. Or I should say determining what the FL of this lens (stock with camera) 18-55. I am zoomed out as far as possible, then focused...... but have no idea of how to figure out the focal length! :veryconfused:

"Zoomed out as far as possible" is 18mm. Zoomed in as far as possible would be 55mm. That's what the 18-55 on the lens means.

[OhNo]

Yup.

[OhNo]

Sky wasn't as good tonight and went downhill from there. Caught the MW at it's Southern intersect with ole Earth. Camera on the CGEM and shot 100 seconds @ ISO 1600. Single jpeg image no processing.

Single___MG_9787 (Large).JPG

If you click up the image it will rotate to the proper orientation...

[OhNo]

This will be the last image I post to this thread, I will work on technique and start another thread when I capture some different nightscapes. This was a first in that I have never left the farm yard to image, or even stare up. The second first was that I used my CG4 with tracking for AP the first time.

While my intention was to get more of the hip roofed barn in the image, the angles didn't work due to the guys Durum crop being in the way. Oh, and the mosquitoes were relentless. The image is the un-processed 90 second version shot at 1600 ISO.

My homework is to find and learn an editing program that allows stacking of images. As OzEclipse pointed out in one of his threads, you probably should image the terrestrial stuff separate from the space stuff. A lot of my software is out-dated as it can be downloaded for free (which I can currently afford). So more reading and/or software purchases are probably in order.

A low level cloud in the South just above the horizon kind of ruined the shot, but as a semi-retired farmer, I an very aware man has no control over Momma Nature. I was tickled that the CG4 worked as well as it did. So all-in-all it wasn't a real waste of time!

L__MG_9831 (Large).JPG

Again left click on the images and it spins to the proper orientation.

[OzEclipse]

Hi Brent,
If possible, I image both land and sky together. It's the best way and most natural looking. However in some locations such as the location in my emu on its head post, landscape required different exposure than sky in which case I captured extra.

good luck & looking forward to seeing more of your nightscapes.

Joe