1/24th of a day of the Trifid

[Screwdriverone]

Hi All,

VERY cold night on Saturday night, the 23rd June.....brrrr. I had a brain spurt during the day and set the custom white balance with the EOS clip in by taking a pic of a white piece of paper in the sunlight and saved it in CWB in the camera.

Funny thing was, I set the camera to manual mode and Backyard EOS reported the white balance NOT set to Custom White Balance, but actually reported it as "White Paper" what a Smart cookie!!!!

The Canon was showing 4 degrees C on the sensor, so it was good that I had done a shakedown on the gear already and was capturing some Sagittarius goodness with the camera nice and chilly.

So, here is a result from 18 x 3 min lights and 5 x 3 min darks at ISO 800. This is to date, the deepest picture I have taken and successfully processed (I hope), so I am quite proud of this one and how it seems to have turned out, even without any flats or bias frames.

Please feel free to comment or suggest any tips or criticisms, I am still on my L plates and playing around with settings on DSS and photoshop CS3 which is what I used to process this one.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look. :) Ive resized this to 1024 x something and saved it as jpg to fit here as a preview, the link to a full sized (3906 x 2602 pixel) 42Mb PNG version is here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/70660066/M20%20230612.png)

Cheers

Chris

[A23649]

I think that it might be a little black clipped and you are losing some data but otherwise it looks really good. And 4 degrees isn't that cold compared to a few recent nights in Canberra.

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks, I didnt think I pushed it that far down as I was careful to keep midtone grey in the background on the histogram.

I did increase the saturation, which did boost it to look like a normal black point sample, so that could be what it is?

Yep, I remember the cold Canberra nights back when I was a young'un, was born there so cold doesnt normally bother me much.....much :)

Cheers

Chris

[saysme]

I like that image, its great when your images keep improving, I would just like to get 3mins subs!

[atalas]

Nice shot Chris.

[jjjnettie]

It looks exactly like a flower. How beautiful. :)

[stardust steve]

great image, keep 'em coming:thumbsup:

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Steve, I did push to 5 mins on the Eagle, but I get impatient watching the Backyard EOS timer and start playing around with files or the internet and that slows down the responses on my sluggish capture laptop and then the PHD wanders off without correcting, so I limited it to 3 mins :)
Glad you liked it!



Thanks Louie, Cheers mate!



I was just looking at this on my son's 81cm monitor and he said exactly the same thing Jeanette! Great minds! I tried to keep the colours of the stars as natural and unprocessed as possible, all this was with PS CS3 only, so just some levels and curves, seems more exposures and a cold camera do wonders for the vignetting I seemed to get before, flats box is on the cards though now...!

Thanks for the comments JJJ! :D



Ta Steve, I am trying to get more, waxing moon and all that....watch this space, some more exotic targets are on the cards, this was a revisit to see if I could process more data as I forget sometimes what to do and get frustrated! LOL.

Cheers

Chris

[Ross G]

A very good photo Chris.

I like the colours and the detail is nice.

Probably not the most technical advice, but when I was using my modded Canon 350D I got my best results using the In Camera Noise Reduction with no darks or flats.

Ross.

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Ross,

I wil give this a try next time, see how it goes, mine isnt modded, but I use the CLS filter to bring out some details and reduce the sky glow/LP.

Cheers

Chris

[Nico13]

Looking good, great work Chris.:thumbsup:

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Ken!

Cheers

Chris

[seeker372011]

Chris

Nice image
But you should really consider getting out to linden, the darker skies will make no end of diffrenece

[NCC-2893]

Well the only criticism I can think of is that I can only produce something about 10% as good.

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Narayan, I am trying to keep the baseline as my house for the moment, the last attempt at imaging from Linden, ended up with me leaving my T ring at home and wasting 6 hours stuffing around. I enjoy the coffee and the wifi at home as well as the convenience of 1/2hr set up rather than 2 hours before I even think of taking an image. Once I max out the improvements I am getting with my learning curve, I will no doubt balance the benefits of dark skies vs convenience and dark skies will win....

Cheers

Chris



Thanks John, I'm glad you like it and its impressive to you, that means a lot with some of the chaff I have produced before.....means I am getting somewhere. :) :)

Cheers

Chris