First Ever Astro-photo

[mick pinner]

Great shots of the occultation last night group,l've just decided to have a crack at photography with both ccd and 35mm so beware the questions will be coming thick and fast as l try to come to grips with this new venture (ah well here goes the budget), this is my first ever attempt--be kind.
Mick

[Astroman]

Nice first try there Mick. You may want to zoom out a bit to get a bit more of the moon. (no good taking pictures of moon rocks when you can't tell where they come from) :)

Was this tracked? Looks like a little bit of blur from movement.

Otherwise you are off to a great start. Took me ages to get a half decent image of the moon.

[[1ponders]]

Nothing wrong with that as a first ever attempt Mick. Apart from some soft focus, which could even be poor seeing conditions, good first shot. I'd recomend using the ccd until you get your exposures right. I know I went through rolls and rolls of film before i started to get the hang of it.

[Vermin]

Its not that closely zoomed in Astroman:

[iceman]

Great first shot Mick, it's very addicitive! Beware! :)

Focus is a bit soft, but that's one of the hardest things to get right!

I hope you don't mind, I did a quick reprocess in photoshop to enhance the detail and contrast a bit..

[gbeal]

Nice Mick, and yes, it will be the end of your budget.
Gary

[Comet Hunter]

Nice first shot Mick!! There's no turning back now....

[ving]

looks way cool :)
congrats!

..and nice mapping of the holes in the cheese :P

[rumples riot]

Nice first try, like anything you will get better with practice and yes, forget having a budget.

[MiG]

Hehe, I was disappointed with my occultation shots and I started thinking: equatorial mount, camera adaptors, digital SLR, ARR! Too expensive!

I got some alright low magnification moon shots last night with a tripod holding the camera but the focus doesn't seem very good.

[ving]

you need one of these mig to hold the camera centered on the EP...
sorry bout the size of the pic...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/ving68/60mm/Dsc03196.jpg

[Thiink]

Nice first shot! The moon seems to be a good target to test out the astrophoto path in the backyard. :)

Yours is better than my first attempt at the moon (below). Photo was taken with a wobbly 60mm, a Kodak DX6440 held up to the eyepiece with no stand by my girlfriend with cloud coverage! I'm going to have to learn all this processing stuff.

http://www.users.on.net/~sjeriksson/img/iceinspace/moon-180205.jpg

ving: do you have a shot of that thing in action?

[mick pinner]

I must admit all this talk of stacking and processing does sound a little daunting Thiink but imagine how much we can annoy the guys on the forum with our stupid questions.

[Thiink]

I'm sure we can get our monies worth! :astron: I just realised I hijacked your thread, sorry about that.

MiG: post your shots up. :)

[ving]

gah! I'll see what i can do! taking a pic of my only camera in action is going to be hard tho :P

[MiG]

http://www.members.optushome.com.au/mig_82/moon.jpg
This is just cropped, no other changes. There's a bit more noise than I usually get because I was using ISO100 rather than ISO50

[iceman]

You can reduce the noise by stacking multiple images, or by using a program like NeatImage. For the moon you won't need more than ISO100 because it's so bright and your shutter speed is fast anyway, but for other fainter objects you'll probably want at least 200 to let more light in and reduce exposure times.

That's a very nice image MiG, focus is spot on. I did a slight reprocess in Photoshop and NeatImage to show what can be done. Hope you don't mind.

[MiG]

The extra contrast and the other things you've done make it look a lot better. Thanks.