Obligatory first Image

[TerminallyTired]

Having recently purchased a canon 550D for business purposes I thought it might be a nice idea to try my hand at some astrophotography with it.

So I dug up my old C8, joined IIS, and purchased an autoguiding setup. Given that the weather has been completely crap, since I made this decision a few weeks ago, I was hanging to get out at give it a try. With a small break in the clouds over Melbourne pending I set up my gear and polar aligned on the moon during the late afternoon.

After darkness fell I slewed over to Orion's sword and started snapping away at M42 in a race against the incoming clouds.

Here is the result:

M42 16/12/2010 (http://www.shoesofseduction.com.au/webspace/Astro/C8%20550D%2020101216%20-%20M42.jpg)

:question:

Celestron C8 with Canon 550D at prime focus on Skywatcher EQ6 Pro. No filters. Starshoot autoguider via Orion ST80. 24 subs and darks @ 40secs each. Processed with DSS & PS CS5

Any suggestions are welcome.

L8r

TT

[jjjnettie]

Hi Jason,
Thats a beaut image for the length of subs you took.
Tell me, did you capture in Raw or Jpeg?
I've the same camera, and can't get DSS to recognise the raw files.

[ZeroID]

I'm no Astrophotog but wow, looks excellent to me, no apparent drift, nice round stars, nice soft natural colours through the gas/dust clouds. I'd be more than happy with that as a 'firstie', .. or a second or third or ....

[mswhin63]

Hi Jason, nice detail on this for 40 seconds. The colouring could be tweak a little as it looks a bit green. DSS can be a bit complicated one of the final settings can be used to align colour a bit better as I have found in a beginners setup. Play around with it a bit.

In the final processing bit align the 3 colours so that they are directly on top of each other then the image will look grey. This seection I haven't found any fine control so this can be difficult.

[mswhin63]

Oh one more thing, try adjusting the highlight control a bit more in DSS see if you can bring out the central star regoin.

[jenchris]

JJJ - DSS - I think you should uninstall it and reinstall it - mine recognises RAW no problem - it also warned me that there was a mix when I inadvertently popped in a jpg.

msw - I'm at the same sort of place - need more time served on the DSS and photoshop!

[jjjnettie]

I didn't know you had the 550d Jenny.
Did you have to upgrade photoshop too for it to recognise the new raw?
Im running windows 7 on this new puter. Could be compatibility issues with that.
Never had any trouble with the 20d, cs3 and xp.

[TerminallyTired]

I captured RAW, but DSS didn't read the images properly. I too am using windows 7 so I'd say it's a compatibility issue of some sort. I read that DSS will read "'most" RAW file types, but just assumed it was having trouble with the proprietary Canon '.CR2' files. Never having used the program before I wasn't sure if it was supposed to handle them.

I ended up converting all the shots to 16bit tiff before running them through DSS.

It was either that or take a big step down in processing power. My Windows 7 machine has 6 x 64bit CPU cores and 8GB of RAM so it chews through everything at quite a pace.



I am processing again right now. I did have the 3 colors directly on top of one another, I will see if I can't get a better balance. Could it be something to do with the images needing to be deBayerised more effectively? As above, I did convert the raw images to tiff using the Canon software "Digital Photo Professional" and I have to admit, I felt pretty dirty afterwards.



Tweaking these settings too will post the results of my second run.

Thanks for all the feedback and tips guys.

L8r

TT

[multiweb]

That's one great close up. Very detailed. Nice work. :thumbsup:

[jenchris]

jjj - I have the 450D Which talks in digi 3 but it still produces cr2 images.(maybe Digi 4 doesn't work the same way).
My photoshop drops the images to 16 bit from 32 before it will open them.
So I'm not in much better a place than using jpeg!
I have the old Canon prog PhotoStudio 5.5 which is not that great, but is really easy to use! (at the level I'm at, it's probably all I need anyway - until I can learn photoshop 6.01)

[TerminallyTired]

Results of more tweaking in DSS and CS5 here: M42 16/12/2010 Tweaked (final DSS steps plus more PS CS5) (http://www.shoesofseduction.com.au/webspace/Astro/C8%20550D%2020101216%20-%20M42%20ver%202.0.jpg)

Settings used this time in DSS: Screen Cap (http://www.shoesofseduction.com.au/webspace/Astro/M42%20version%202.0%20DSS%20setting s%20screen%20cap.jpg)

A big thanks to atalas for his wonderful PS tutorials! :thumbsup:

L8r

TT

[OzRob]

That's a nice first image. The domain you have the image hosted on is not your normal astrophotography site...lol

[TerminallyTired]

Consider the domain a subtle plug for the business that pays for all of my gear. :thumbsup:

L8r

TT

[adman]

Jason - I have just discovered the same problem with DSS and the 550D - the current version on the DSS website - i think it version 3.3.2 or something like that, doesn't like the 550D RAW files - there is a beta version 3.3.3 that works no problems

Adam

[Keshdogga]

Hey guys with the incompatibility, have you tried setting the compatibility of DDS to Windows XP? I have Vista and most of the programs I need for AP tell me it's incompatible until i change this setting (Focus Assist, Catch 42 and so on). Just a thought, possibly redundant, but if it works yay! I'm sure everyone knows how to change this but just in case.
>Right click DDS
>Compatibility Tab
>Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP

Also, Very Nice M42 Jason!

[jjjnettie]

I thought of that one too Casey. But the computer said no......
I'll download version 3.3.3
Not that I have any new images that I can process.

[TerminallyTired]

Ok.. 3.3.3 it is then. Thanks for the info Adam.

On a side note, does anyone think superior results are to be had from Iris?

L8r

TT

[jjjnettie]

I've given IRIS a go, but I'm not so good on command lines.
DSS does the job just nicely for me.