My humble first attempts

[erick (Eric)]

Well I said I'd show you what I obtained with my setup for widefield film photography with some attempt at tracking, described here:-

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=19703

I originally expected hopeless tracking so didn't bother with anything better than Fuji 400ASA colour print film that has been in the fridge for a few years. (and KMart film processing)

I did better than expected.

General details:-
Pentax KX SLR. All shots taken with mirror locked up and remote shutter release cable. I used three lenses. Pentax 28mm/2.8, Pentax 55mm/1.8 and Pentax 135mm/3.5. Following advice I've read on the forum, I closed each lens down a couple of stops.

I've scanned the negatives at 2400dpi and, after trying for a while, I gave up trying to get all dust and fine hairs off the negatives . I'm going to have to leave that to the experts when I get a couple of these enlarged to see if they will come up OK.

Then, of course, I've had to compress the jpgs to less than 150kByte. No other processing. If anyone would really like to see any of these full size, let me know and I'll try to place them somewhere for download.

B06 - Centaurus/Crux. 55mm @ f2.8 and 2 min exposure. Coalsack and Omega Centauri have come up well. I was thrilled to see NGC5128 (Centaurus A) quite visible as well.

B10 - Crux. 135mm @f5.6 and 5 min exposure. I initially thought satellite!!, but the track is green and has a companion regular red flash. A boring plane instead

B14 - Large Magellanic Cloud. 135mm @ f5.6 and 10 min exposure. This was much better than I had hoped and no significant tracking problem that I can see?

B18 - Scorpius and Jupiter. 55mm @ f2.8 and 2 min exposure. Quite low down to the East. Also Ballarat was only some 15 km in that direction so lots of skyglow. Still some interesting things to see. M4 stands out well. Tracking still not bad - I can see the 2 min movement of the trees (no wind that evening).

B22 - "Emu". 28mm @ f4 and 5 min exposure. This is what I really wanted and I waited until Crux was well overhead. I am thrilled with this photo. Bit hard to see on this compressed version, but NGC5128 is seen in this wideangle shot. However, the Emu itself is great. I can now take down the shot I printed from the internet and replace it with my personal attempt if it enlarges well. Great!

OK, fresh 400ASA slide film next time and I want to get Scorpius without the sky glow - much later at night. Must see if I can get the Leo triplet in a 135mm long exposure shot. Also SMC and 47Tuc are calling me...............

Thanks for looking.
Eric

[Rob_K]

Wow - great job Erick! Really like the LMC! Mount seems to work well.

Cheers -

[iceman (Mike)]

Excellent work Eric. The problem with the images though is the horrible compression you had to apply to get the filesize under 150k.

Can I please suggest that you resize the images first, and then save for websize.

That is, resize to 800x600 first, then save as web-quality jpeg. Once you've resized it, the compression won't need to be as great and it won't end up so pixelated.

What software are you using for image manipulation?

[leon]

Nice Eric, your humble first attempts as you say, are great, well done.

Leon

[bojan]

Terrific work, Eric :-) Film is still alive and well, those images are the proof :-)
What scanner did you use?

[Ingo]

Very nice for first attempts.

Thanks for sharing!

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by bojan

What scanner did you use?

A rather old Canon - 5200F

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Excellent work Eric. The problem with the images though is the horrible compression you had to apply to get the filesize under 150k.

Can I please suggest that you resize the images first, and then save for websize.

That is, resize to 800x600 first, then save as web-quality jpeg. Once you've resized it, the compression won't need to be as great and it won't end up so pixelated.

What software are you using for image manipulation?

IrfanView, Mike - and I obviously don't know how to use it properly .

I'll resize and compress them correctly tonight, as you propose, and replace the images. Thanks

[acropolite (Phil)]

Nice work Eric, next step DSLR....

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by bojan

....Film is still alive and well, those images are the proof :-)...

Phil said it - film will be dead for me as soon as I can afford a Pentax DSLR.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Wow, you must be very happy with those shots!
Well done and thanks for posting.

[Tamtarn]

Good first effort Eric, we can recommend the Pentax as we are using the Pentax ist DL and are quite happy with the results we are getting.

The new K Series apparently are great.

[Dr Nick (Nick)]

Awesome work!

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by Tamtarn

Good first effort Eric, we can recommend the Pentax as we are using the Pentax ist DL and are quite happy with the results we are getting. The new K Series apparently are great.

Yes, I've been watching the K100D - waiting on more reports. It'll will have to do everything I want to do with a camera - daytime, flash, people, places, astro.....etc. I've a pile of Pentax K mount lenses I don't want to waste.

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by iceman

.....That is, resize to 800x600 first, then save as web-quality jpeg. Once you've resized it, the compression won't need to be as great and it won't end up so pixelated....

Well, I tried a few - first resizing to 800x600 - down from some 3400x2200 pixels - then saving with sufficient compression to get it just under 150kByte. Not sure if they are better than my first attempt?

Here is B07 (replacing B06 - I've managed to overwrite that with the lower quality version ). All the same except 5 min exposure

And B14 and B22.

[RB (Andrew)]

Beautiful work Eric.

Well done.

[Ric]

Very nice Eric, I really enjoyed the emu.

Cheers

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

I knew you would be good at it eric

[xelasnave]

Fantastic Eric, they are really great, you must be so happy to have made those captures. You must frame them and hang them in pride of place.
alex

[iceman (Mike)]

They are much better Eric. Much less compression artifacts and pixelation!