Well, still very much at the bottom of the learning curve with sketching, here is M83 from recent observing. My scanner seemed to have left off the fainter shades of pencil, so I've added them with GIMP, as well as inverting the colours. It still looks better on paper than on the scan and I'm not sure how to address this. Oh, magnification was 135x. I had done a sketch at 175x a couple of nights before, but the sketching seemed better at lower power. I have to say sketching at the eyepiece is challenging enough for me at the best of times, but this was near zenith so I was grappling with Dobson's hole, pencils, eraser, reading glasses and light two steps up my ladder. Seeing was good though!
As usual, any feedback most welcome.
Last edited by Paddy; 12-04-2010 at 03:21 PM.
Reason: image too big
I know what you mean,my scanner doesn't get the faint stuff also.one way you can fix this is if you have a digital camera ,take a photo of it making sure that the camera is 90* to the sketch(this is what i did with my leo triplet sketch as the detail was too faint for the scanner).You will most likely have colour cast and so what you do,is in gimp right click on the pic and go down to the mode tab and it will come up with RGB or grayscale click grayscale and then invert it and viola it should be pretty good.hope this is of some help.
Despite your problem it is still a lovely sketch
Regards orestis
....... I was grappling with Dobson's hole, pencils, eraser, reading glasses and light two steps up my ladder. Seeing was good though!
Sounds familiar!
I was having trouble juggling my reading glasses on and off between looking in the eyepiece and sketching, then realized it was easier to leave the glasses on and just refocus.
A booklight with cellophane over it clipped to the sketchpad might be a good idea too.
Thanks Molly. I've tried with the glasses on, but just can't get the feeling of getting up close and peering around. I've wondered about making a clip on light with red LEDs. One day perhaps. In the meantime, I'll have a look at some book lights. At present I've got a red light on a string dangling from my finderscope, which reminds me a bit of the opening credits of Calum.
i'm sorry patrick but i missed a step,when you right click on the image there is no mode tab you have to go down to the image tab and then the mode tab pos up.