First Astro shot with 350D

[westsky]

G'day I picked up the 350D today and decided to have a play even with the clouds and really bad sky.
Taken from about 4km from Brisbane city center ( lots of light pollution)

details are
unmodified 350D
C11 at F10 (2800 FL)
EQ6 ( not polar aligned about 8 degrees from pole)
unguided 1min 20sec, about as long as I could shoot without getting too much skyglow
Iso 800
shot in Raw mode converted to Jpeg no other processing done.
Heavly compressed from around 7mb

I can't remember if I took a dark frame with this shot?
Considering the conditions it didn't turn out too bad.
I can't wait to get this camera under a dark sky.
cheers
David.

[iceman]

Great first light David, I haven't had mine new 350D out under the stars yet as the weather has been most unco-operative since I bought it.

The image is suffering from a load of jpeg compression because you've left it at the original resolution (3500pixels!). But I've had a quick shot at processing (hope that's ok), just some quick curves and levels and a pass through NeatImage.

It's smoothed a bit too much for my liking but due to the jpeg compression of your original to fit to forum guidelines, that's the way it came out.

Can't wait to see your next attempts after a few images are stacked!

[westsky]

Thanks Mike, I was fighting clouds looking for those sucker holes but I couldn't resist trying to get a shot on the first night :-))
I did try some processing of this image and in the Raw format it does process well.
I,m looking forward to this weekend to try the camera out under dark sky with some longer exposures.
So far I,m impressed they pick up a huge amount of detail in such a short time, and they are easy to use.
I did use the remote switch I built the other day, I,m glad to see that it works perfectly. Now I might have a crack at building the timer remote :-))

David.

[[1ponders]]

G'day David. Great to see you join th Canon Digital revolution. I would have thought you would have bought the 20Da for sure though :P Does this mean were going to get even more cloud?

If it's fine this weekend pop up to Astroron's place and try it out. We're hoping to get a bit of a croud there for a Xmas BBQ

[RB]

Nice one David, looking forward to a whole lot more from you.
Keep us informed on how you go with the timer.

Awesome camera too BTW.
Did you use Mirror lockup?

[davidpretorius]

Great stuff,

I can't wait to start getting these first early images.

That initial thrill of the first image thru some new equipment, with that tantalising feeling of more to come!!!!

i love these type of shots. Tidalphase has just started as well and I will follow with a lot of vested interest cos in a few years time, i will be bugging the hell out out of you guys when i get mine!!!!

[ving]

nice start david :)
plenty of detail there.

[Striker]

Well done David,

So you decided to joing the digital group....you wont be dissapointed.

[westsky]

Thanks guys,it isn't the greatest shot but I am impressed as to how easy it is to use.
I might try stacking the other 27 I did last night it should give a pleasing result.
Hi Paul, yes I thought it was time to get with the times so to speak :-))
I must admit it gives a sense of satisfaction to see the results straight away instead of months down the track as you do with film.
I thought long and hard about the 20DA but when I saw the price of the 350D with twin lens I couldn't resist.
I have got the camera booked in with Hutech to get the mod done, but there's a one month waiting list, it least it gives me time to get a few shots to compere with.
Sorry Paul Leyburn beacons me this weekend I,m just hoping the weather is good.

Thanks Andrew, I,m still learning how to turn this camera on :-)) I couldn't even find how to use the LCD screen to focus so I just used the viewfinder but give me a few more nights with it and I will suss it all out.The timer will have to wait for a while as I was happy to use the simple wired remote and I think the cost would be alot more for the timer.
Didn't use mirror lock as I don't know how to :-))

Tony, what do you use to work with Raw files? is there any program that will stack them or do you have to convert them to another format first?

David and David H stay tuned theres more to come :-)) I,m already planning my shooting schedule for this weekend.

David.

[Striker]

David,

Havn't used Raw yet.....all Jpegs.

Raws confuse me....and they look like rubish...lol

I have the program Images plus 2.5 now so I can use this program to work and convert my raws if I ever do any imaging again....grrrrr clouds

[davidpretorius]

try the free iris (http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/us/iris/iris.htm) , it is a pain to get going and use properly, but at least you can load your file into the program and convert your raw over.

give it a go to start. Having spent some time on it, i wrote a little article http://precons.com/iis/Articles/processing_toucam_notmodded_iris.as px

Eventually i will move to image plus, but whilst iris is free, i will use it for a while and save the money for other equipment.

I would love to play with any of your images or set of images. Having a set of 10 orions in raw format to work with in iris would be great.

[westsky]

David it's a done deal, I will get my son to upload them for you to get.
I,ll pick the best ten. Will drop you a Pm when its done.
Thanks for the link to iris I will check it out,
I do have Maxim DL V3.? so I will give that a try.

Tony, I found quite a large difference in the Jpeg and raw files, the raw files seemed to hold more data, I have no idea yet which is the easiest to work with.
I think with the clouds tonight I might get a chance to play with the files.

David.

[Striker]

Yes that's what everyone is telling me.....I just have to work out to process raws..

Hopefully someone with this experience is going to Lostock so I can learn of them.

You can send the files to me so I can see what I can do in Images plus for you...you have my email address.

Good luck with Iris....I'm not going to say anymore....lol

[atalas]

Nice first light David !

[westsky]

Thanks Louie,I have to admit not the best shot I have ever done but not bad with a new toy that I still have to learn.
I D/L a program called Rawshooter essentials
http://www.pixmantec.com/products/rawshooter_essentials.html
it's free and what it does is allow you to view and process Raw files it then converts to a Tiff or Jpeg.
This is the first time I have tried it and it seems to do a decent job.
The Gui is I guess you would call it "different"
But the program is easy enough to use.
I did a quick and dirty process of the same image here is the result.
The one thing I can't seem to get right is the contrast on the stars, they looked quite ok on the original but are much brighter on this version.
as yet I don't know if this software will stack raw images , I will have a more detailed play with it later.

David

[davidpretorius]

now this is what i am talking about!!!!!

do you think my jaw dropped, ****** oath it did
the colour is awesome, great shot!!!

an abe "gradient" removal via a subtract in iris, a multiply by 1.8 and a gaussian filter of 1.0

[TidaLpHasE]

;)Congrats Dave on your first light image with the awsome 350D.

I like the colors great pic.

Unfortunately the LCD monitor cannot be used as a viewfinder for shooting:sad:

To enable Miror Lockup, press the Menu button,use the left/right cross keys to go to the last menu icon, use the up/down cross key to go down to Custom functions, press the set button, use the up/down cross keys to find Mirror lockup, press the set button, press the up/down cross keys to enable, press the set button.

Might be good to also enable Long Exposure Noise Reduction as well while in here.

I hope this helps, i am still learning this camera also and get a kick out of others posting pics using the 350.

Keep em coming.;)

[iceman]

As soon as these clouds clear hopefully i'll have my first widefield milkyway shot with the 350d.. Will definitely try the mirror lockup and noise reduction.

[Itchy]

Hi Tony,

At this stage I am planning to go to Lostock and Mike has asked me to conduct a workshop on DSLR stuff. I will definitley cover RAWs, working with ImagesPlus.

Cheers

[Itchy]

Hi David,

First of all, congratulations on a good start with your 350D.

Rawshooter would be OK for conversion and other processing but I'm pretty sure it won't automatically stack your images. You may be able to align and stack them one at a time using layers (as in Photoshop) if it has that feature.

On an earlier question, you do have to convert your RAWs to another format (Tifs or fits, NOT Jpeg) before processing them further. Rawshooter should be useful there. When I convert using Imagesplus, I always choose either Linear conversion or CFA (pre Bayer interpolation). This applies a minimum of processing to the images so that calibration with darks and flats can be more accurate.

Cheers

[Striker]

Look forward to catching up with you Tony.....keep working on Imagesplus will you.

I am getting the hang of things going through all the video tutorials.....only problem their is so many I forget them the next day...

As Trevor said David..you can not use the LCD to focus on the 350D...only camera capable of doing this is the 20DA.

[Striker]

Thats the reply I have been asking for over a week now Tony....thanks.

I converted some old raws with the same process through linear conversion on ImagesPlus and found the tiffs easy to work with.

I was under the impression you work on the raws before converting to tiff which I was having difficulty doing....do you convert to 16 or 8 bit tiff...does it matter.

Thanks Tony.....that has made things a lot more workable and whole lot easier.

[westsky]

Thanks Itchy, that makes things a bit clearer for me as well. I used Rawshooter to convert to Tiffs then I stacked 4 of the images with Registax then did some processing in Photoshop CS It's interesting to see how much detail there is in very short exposures taken in very light polluted sky.

David

[Itchy]

No Worries, my pleasure.


I use 16 bit until processing is complete. The bit depth determines how many levels of each colour (R, G or B) you can store. 8 bit gives you 256 levels where 16 bit gives you 65536 levels. When you stretch you brightness levels, 16 bit allows for smoother colour transitions. The trade off is file size. A 16 bit TIFF from a 300D is 38Mb. ImagesPlus gives you the option of using 16 lossless compressed FITS files which are about half the size. When I'm done in IP, I convert to 16 bit TIFF to use in Photoshop.

Cheers

[Itchy]

Hi David,

That is a great improvement on your first post. Well Done. Image stacking is the secret to good astro images. You can easily see the difference between a single image and a stack of 4. The more you stack, the better the image will be. This is because the noise in the image is reduced by the square root of the number of images stacked. So 4 images = half the noise. 10 images the noise is reduced to around one third. 100 images gives you a 10 fold reduction in noise.


Cheers