McNaught - your best and worst images!

[Rob_K]

Comet McNaught is battling valiantly against the moonlight and distance, but in just a few days we'll start to get darker skies after sunset and I'm sure the comet has a few more surprises left (twists in the 'tail'?);).

Reviewing the last couple of weeks, it seemed that all we'd seen was the stunning excellence exhibited by IISers in the sticky "Images" thread. There must be room for the failures too. Yin & yang. So I went through my shots, which incidentally range from mediocre to appallingly bad.

I'm sure that most people have 'the image from hell', the shocker you forgot to delete, or the one you over-processed to within an inch of its life:P.

My best was taken 22 Jan, the first day the clouds lifted here, with Fuji Finepix S5500, 3-sec exposure. The worst was taken at the same time, with NexImage through 4.5" f8 reflector. The AVI was full of lines & other noise (hot chip), with almost no contrast. When I ran it through Registax, I didn't even bother with the wavelets, left it as it was! And what about the purple colour?! So sixties......

So please add your best & worst, and don't leave me sitting like a shag on a rock....

Cheers -

[ballaratdragons]

Good idea Rob. :thumbsup:

Here is my best so far (still not good) - Toucam
and My worst! - Kodak pocket camera

[erick]

I'll be in here tomorrow. But you won't see my worst - they are almost all white with a little hint of shubs at the bottom! On the first day, Sun 14th, we saw the comet blazing just above the sun and as the sun went into cloud I shot off some slides in the few minutes the comet was visible - and massively overexposed every one of them. I was so annoyed I binned them! So I'll dig out my second worst.

[EzyStyles]

first pic is my best shot taken at brighton beach 22nd. the second is my creative shot taken 25th and third pic is my worst also on the 25th.

[erick]

Here we go - both from the evening of 22nd January.

Pic 1 - Almost over the central business district of Melbourne - almost got a tan from the light pollution.

Pic 2 - "Pay attention class!! Yes, there is a comet visible in this slide!" But at the wrong end of the bracketted exposures! And with no foreground. Yuck!

[higginsdj]

This is a stacked image. Sorry about all the noise - just wanted to see how much detail I could get in the tail - taken from Canberra. Taken with an old Nikon CP5000 digital camera - about 10 x 8 second exposures summed in MaxIm.

[JohnG]

Here's a reasonable one of the head and an absolute shocker, could not get the focus right. :P

Cheers

JohnG

[leon]

Hi All
I probably regard the first as my best,and the worst is the first time i saw Mcnaught, and only had about three minutes to prepare, and shoot.

Cheers leon :thumbsup:

[Garyh]

Hi all....:hi:
Heres my best and worse images so far. Well the ones worth keeping that is!!
Had lots totally over or underexposed and poor focus...but they have all been trashed..We had 2 great nights hear, 19th and 20th and clouded out till the 28th which was a reasonable night besides having a half moon.
Ok best is from the 20th and the worse is my morning shot from the other day, so much smoke that you couldn`t see the comet visually!!
Looks like we all got clouded out one time or another....funny that there has been soo much cloud and no rain!!...crazy weather the last few years. and thats not counting all those dumb firebugs out there...
Lets hope for some crystal clear skies and dark skies for a week or two then lots of rain!!
Cheers Gary....:thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

ummm my best are my worst, I just didn't get anything the calibre of most of the members here.

[EzyStyles]

geee'sss Garyy! that is probably one of the best McNaught pic i have ever seen!!! great shot :) what lense did u use?

[Garyh]

Thanks Eric, didn`t come out too bad that shot!
I actually used a old pentax 50mm m42 lense stopped down to f2.8.
Some of the old pentax lenses hold up very well to the new canon ef lenses. Well the short focal length ones do like the 28mm, 35mm, 50mm (stopped down) with very little Ca etc so if your on a budget, worth a go...this lense cost me $25 of ebay...
Cheers Gary

[jjjnettie]

Here are two I rescued from my recycling bin.
They were chosen because when I took them I remember quite clearly thinking, "Gee, this will be a really good shot.":lol:
The one with the lines was taken with the video camera, 666 frames stacked in K3ccd Tools.
The other was from the Powershot.

[huckabuck]

hello to all, boy am i green with envy. Mcnaught had just started brightening up here when it decided to head south.:( oh well, i've seen several comets but nothing like you blokes are witnessing. anyway theres some really great shots here. keep up the good work. I hope no one minds if i use these as a slide show on my background.

huckabuck