I'd been mostly thwarted by clouds in my attempts to view and photograph Comet Lovejoy leading up to christmas. It finally cleared on christmas morning, but with three young kids I couldn't head out to photograph it - and then we went on holidays the next day.
It wasn't until the last day of 2011 that I was able to get up early and head out to photograph the comet from our holiday place at Kioloa Beach, which by now had risen higher in the sky, grew a long tail that was almost 30 degrees long, but had also faded considerable compared to the brightest views from the 24th-26th December.
So unfortunately it's not the best image you'll find of the Comet, but at least I was able to finally capture it - and here are the results. What's "the Emu"? It's the emu shape formed by the dark patches of sky and bulge of the milky way around this part of the sky.
The first image is a single 60 second exposure taken with a Canon 40D and Sigma 17-70mm lens, ISO1600, f/2.8.
The second image is a single 30 second exposure. Same setup.
I think to capture these comets well with a DSLR you have to either:
use a tracking device
use a widefield really fast lens like you did and 30-60 secs
use super high ISO like 12600 or more and ICNR and hope it works out.
stack lots of shorter exposures to get the signal
I found this whole process kind of educational about what works with these sort of shots.
Looking at the viewfinder is also not a good guide to the final result. It doesn't show up star rotation which with this comet are all on the left side of the image and the right side stars stay pretty round.
For the next comet I plan to use a portable tracking device like the Losmandy unit and use a 5DMk11 or 111 if its out and high ISO and a few minutes and a nice fast wide lens.
I like the second image with the foreground lights, Mike! Was the comet visible above those lights?
Cheers,
Stephen
Thanks Stephen. The comet was barely, barely visible naked eye. I glimpsed it only occassionally. It certainly didn't jump out at me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kinetic
Lovely image Mike,
Did you get a set of identical exposures that could stack?
Looks like the 40D does well enough anyway at 1600!
Nice job.
Steve
Thanks Steve. I did take a bunch of images to try and stack them, but I'm having problems with Deep Sky Stacker at the moment so haven't been able to stack them. I'll give ImagesPlus a go later.
The 40D is ok at ISO1600. It does have a "H" ISO mode which is ISO3200 I think, but it's extremely noisy and virtually unusable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
Great shots Mike.
I think to capture these comets well with a DSLR you have to either:
use a tracking device
use a widefield really fast lens like you did and 30-60 secs
use super high ISO like 12600 or more and ICNR and hope it works out.
stack lots of shorter exposures to get the signal
I found this whole process kind of educational about what works with these sort of shots.
Looking at the viewfinder is also not a good guide to the final result. It doesn't show up star rotation which with this comet are all on the left side of the image and the right side stars stay pretty round.
For the next comet I plan to use a portable tracking device like the Losmandy unit and use a 5DMk11 or 111 if its out and high ISO and a few minutes and a nice fast wide lens.
Greg.
Thanks Greg - you're quite right. I really would loved the 5D Mark II with a faster lens. I had to use my 17-70 rather than the usual 24-105, simply for the wider field of the 17mm, but also because the 17-70 is f/2.8 and the 24-105 is f/4.0 - too slow for astro shots like this (or timelapses).
There's been some great shots where it's a single shot of 30-60 seconds, but most of those were when the comet was brighter and had some nice foreground.
Most of the great comet-only shots were tracked and didn't bother with silly things like a foreground
Thanks Greg - you're quite right. I really would loved the 5D Mark II with a faster lens. I had to use my 17-70 rather than the usual 24-105, simply for the wider field of the 17mm, but also because the 17-70 is f/2.8 and the 24-105 is f/4.0 - too slow for astro shots like this (or timelapses).
There's been some great shots where it's a single shot of 30-60 seconds, but most of those were when the comet was brighter and had some nice foreground.
Most of the great comet-only shots were tracked and didn't bother with silly things like a foreground [/QUOTE]
I think you could track the comet and also get a stable foreground.
It would mean you would take an LRGB series or in the case of a DSLR a few shots of the foreground with the tracking turned off and then use a layer mask to insert it into the final image. I was considering doing that with one of my shots not yet published with a tree in it. But when time is pressed between 3am and 4:30am some things have to be put aside to get a decent image at all. If there were more time or you planned only the one image that'd be the way.
I think you could track the comet and also get a stable foreground.
It would mean you would take an LRGB series or in the case of a DSLR a few shots of the foreground with the tracking turned off and then use a layer mask to insert it into the final image. I was considering doing that with one of my shots not yet published with a tree in it. But when time is pressed between 3am and 4:30am some things have to be put aside to get a decent image at all. If there were more time or you planned only the one image that'd be the way.
Great images there Mike, particularly the second one!
Thanks Paul and Rolf. I originally wasn't a fan of the second one but it does give it a sense of scale. In the 30s exposures, the lights were all blown out so this shot includes some shorter exposures to mask out some of the glow from the lights.
Challenging comet.
Very nice photos Mike I prefer the first one, it has less distractions.
You really managed to get a very nice shot from a very difficult scenario.
Challenging comet.
Very nice photos Mike I prefer the first one, it has less distractions.
You really managed to get a very nice shot from a very difficult scenario.
Thanks Luis. I had a look on your website yesterday to look at your comet photos (for inspiration!).
I really enjoyed yours, some vibrant colours! I'm glad you were able to capture such stunning images of it.
