Hi Raymo,
As someone starting out on their AP Journey, I find these images to be quite frankly spectacular.
I agree with most of what you state but, not necessarily all. Again, I state I am a rank beginner & will happily defer to your experience..
Now that I have acquired a modest EQ mount, I have mapped out what I hope will be a path to success.. initially getting my head around the mount visually.. then using my DSLR & kit lens to keep it simple & work on my setup, alignments & tracking, then to my modest little Orion 80mm ST & then on & on & so forth because, like you stated, I agree that it is important to become competent at each step & sort out the basics in simple form... if you keep changing things up I think it will be near impossible to figure out where you are lacking & need improvements...
Where I disagree to some extent is on the software comment; I do use a bit of software, I don't understand it all necessarily but, with use & experimentation.. I gain a better understanding of it.. thus far, it has helped me turn some average images into something of reasonable quality so, at least I gain a measure of satisfaction out of the beginnings of my journey. That said, I've mainly got hold of the free stuff with the exception of Startools & Affinity Photo which I already owned due to my terrestrial photo activities.. Software has it's place in the digital world.. In my belief, the trick is to not let it entirely mask your ability to see the faults in your unprocessed images...
When all is said & done though, I have a huge admiration to those who did their astrophotography with film cameras; I cannot begin to imagine the challenges in achieving good outcomes in that realm & I have reasonable experience in using film cameras albeit, for terestrial photography..
I hope this post came over the right way; I have nothing but, the utmost respect for folk such as yourself & the experience & knowledge that you have & freely share...
I'd would definitely be keen to see some detail on exposure settings, ISO & shutter speeds, particularly for the single shot photo's you post but, also for any stacked shots.
Cheers for sharing
Quote:
Originally Posted by raymo
This is best viewed at 80% screen.
As stated in my NGC 55 thread, I have given up imaging altogether, and will
post some of my early images to show newbies that reasonable images can be obtained with pretty basic gear and technique. I won't dig out the acquisition details for these images unless somebody asks for them for a particular image.
Of recent times I have seen a slow increase in the number of newbies that from the get go are buying a slew of imaging equipment, hardware, and software, having little or no idea of how to set it all up , or use it when it is set up. I so wish all newbies would learn their way around the sky, and get a reliable basic image acquisition routine mastered before moving on to all the bells and whistles.
Happy snapping
raymo
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