Well I tried using Pixinsight for the first time tonight and must say I'm impressed.
I took some shots last night using the old canon 40d and 100mm f2.8 lens mounted on the guiding scope is Sydney.
Only got 9x90sec shots of the Orion region before clouds rolled in but stacked them with just some darks and here is a cropped section.
There's a lot to learn in Pixinsight and glad its a 45 day trial. If anyone has tips on it please share.
Brett, that's a very pleasing result from Sydney. Nice field of view and you can make out the horsehead quite well. I think some of your subs have been affected by high cloud by the look of the diffusion around the brighter stars. Not much you can do about that but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and start shooting even when you see the clouds approaching. Well done, you should be proud of your achievement.
Thanks, the clouds snuck up on me. I left the laptop outside doing its stuff taking the photos while I sat inside watching a movie. Went outside to check and all the stars were gone. Checked the laptop and yep, most subs washed out with cloud. Picked the best ones and used those and I think your right in that thin cloud is present in some. Hard to tell sometimes between that and sky glow.
But it's pixinsight I'm most impressed with and I just want to get out and collect more images now.
great result - especially for a movie night on the couch.
the lens you were using must be awesome... 100mm f2.8 from Canon?
never seen a "version" like this before. and not in this clarity, for sure. I hope you'll be using this setup for a while and post your photos here. Guided 100mm camera lens shots are uncommon.
Do you mind the big halos around the stars? I don't. It's not scientifically true imaging - but it lends a distinct character!
the lens you were using must be awesome... 100mm f2.8 from Canon?
Yes, its actually the canon 100mm macro lens which I find very sharp.
Quote:
Originally Posted by silv
Do you mind the big halos around the stars? I don't. It's not scientifically true imaging - but it lends a distinct character!
Its not what I was after but Michael is right in that some of the shots were affected by very thin high cloud before the bigger ones rolled in. I thought about trying to fix it in lightroom but left it as is.
Yes,
Canon 100mm f2.8 FD is awesome lens (when stopped down to f3.5 ~ f4).
it has only a hint of lateral CA, but that is easily sorted out in software (PTlens for example).
glad you're loving pixinsight, I fell in love with it too, lets me work the way I want to work (not saying other programs are bad, just for ME pixinsight is my workhorse).
Dont be too put off at cloudy shots, they can also add interest, bad for nebulosity shots but if you're after comets for example clouds and sky glow are less of a problem. Along as you have stars to align with, crop around your target of interest and use DBE (Dynamic Background Extraction) you can clear away skyglow and blurred clouds from your integrated image fairly well.
I'm Nikon based and also love my 105/2.8 macro lens, for years it was my general walk around lens too, just so sharp and minimal distortion/CA .
would you mind posting a daylight photo of a lamp pole, a white house wall corner or something - taken with that lens?
Preferably in the same f-stop setting you used on Orion.
I took out my Sony SEL18200 the other day to take pictures of the first snow and was immediately reminded why I didn't like that lens much - and why I had gotten a mirror lens - which indeed performs nicely on star colours, as good as your glass canon lens, actually.
Not sure if these are what your after but here goes. Shots were done at f3.5 and no processing done on them. I have also added in the uncropped version of Orion.
Like the uncropped more Brett. The most cropping I would have done is to remove a strip on the left half way between the edge and the first belt star.
It's, to my taste, a better picture than the original crop. And a great photo result.
On the terrestrial photos; the lens seems quite good. No obvious CA, and reasonably sharp across the field (esp. that driveway photo has a lot of DoF for f3.5 on a 100mm) to my eyes. The halo around the lamp post has me puzzled a bit, it's like white CA (which is a dumb idea). Do you know the reason.
I have the 100f2.8 Macro Canon and it gives good results too.
Trev
Yes, how far to crop an image is always the interesting part. Just wish I had more data for it. Need to wait until supermoon goes away now and stay up late. Seems the skyglow is less after midnight out my way but I also have an astronomic cls filter to try as well.
Mine is also the 2.8 macro lens but all shots were taken at f3.5 for this. Its about 7 years old though so not the new version.
cropping is where the art factor comes in, right? my taste is met more with the original crop.
thanks for the photos to show the lens quality in daylight.
nice lamp post!
but the drive way photo has it all. Structure on the roof and the sunlit tree - depth, sharp on the drain pipe, and no color fringing. really good lens. will store this info in my brain's backyard shed.
