M17 single frame

[raymo]

35 secs @ ISO 1600
raymo

[ZeroID (Brent)]

RAYMO !! STOPPIT !!!
You're starting to embarrass us with your excellent one-shot pix ....

Nice work though, just shows what can be acheived quite simply with some skills and good gear.
Well done < mumbles off out to the Ob to rethink his imaging plans >

[astroboof (Steve McN)]

Onya Raymo! That's my kind of astrophotography. Well not quite as good as that, as I am the laziest imagist on the planet.

Cheers.

[Kev11 (Kevin)]

Raymo, I too am bowled over by the quality of your work. I seem to have the same equipment - 8"f5 on HEQ5 and Canon 1100 - so am eager to emulate.
Do you use a Bahtinov mask for focus?
Are there any special settings and modes of the Canon you use?
Have you experienced any problems with vibration from the camera mirror flip up? Earlier Canons had a mirror-lock function not on the 1100.

Kevin

[raymo]

Thank you all very much.
Kevin, Yes I use a B. mask. No special settings. White balance set to
daylight. Mirror and shutter vibes are not a problem with longer
exposures. They are with the moon, so I use 1/3200 or 1/4000th of
a sec so the shutter opens and closes before the vibes can get going.
Just about all of these single frame images are compromises. I have to sacrifice some qualities of the images in order to get a passable result. For instance, the sky is almost always too black. No separate darks , flats, etc. Just enable in camera noise reduction,[ both high
ISO and long exposure]. They are all single subs from old stacking sets. 1100D is budget level, most other models still have lock up.
raymo

[John W (John Wilkinson)]

Hi Raymo, Nice shot - I'm also experimenting with single shot pics and canon 1200d. Which scope did you use and was it tracking? Cheers, J W.

[raymo]

Hi John, I'm not experimenting with single frames really, just playing
around with old frames from stacking sets because the weather won't let me get any new material. It was the 8", which I use almost exclusively.
The tracking was on. The longest possible exposure whilst still having
round stars without tracking, is around half a second with my rig.
raymo

[Kev11 (Kevin)]

Raymo, thank you very much for that detailed and very useful reply. Yes, it was moon shots in which the vibration was apparent, will try your high shutter speed approach.
I was also coming around to the idea that I needed to make more frames in a set (atmospheric fluctuations) to get a good single frame.
Cheers