My first ever image... you guessed it... M42 NoH8 ;)
He guys.. I cant even begin to describe the trauma getting this has caused me! Issue apon issue... I ended up manually stacking 50 of my light frames and 15 of my darks in photoshop... no i havent slept. They were unguided 30sec iso1600 subs on a fairly cold night, Im sure you can do the math but its 25 mins of exposure out the 90 frames (45mins) that I could have stacked (but got to tired). Please let me know what you think
Not too bad at all Bendy. Nice natural colours and good dust lanes. Well done..
What was the hardware setup for this ?
Thanks man! My gear is as follows: Skywatcher ED80, Skywatcher HEQ5 GoTo Mount and a Canon EOS 600D running Magic Lantern (a freeware that has a whole bunch of cool feature's such as an in camera intervalometer). Thats all, no guiding, no laptop.
Nice Bendy, great first image
I have a similar setup but with a 5DmkII and I usually take 45sec exposures at different ISOs to get more range (especially for m42). For example this: http://goo.gl/ABUVd was about 30 frames of 45sec exp at each of ISO1600, ISO3200 and ISO6400 plus a heap of dark frames and all stacked in DeepSkyStacker.
I've always been tempted by Magic Lantern but never really needed it as I don't do any serious video stuff, I like the idea of a built in intervalometer though.
Nice Bendy, great first image
I have a similar setup but with a 5DmkII and I usually take 45sec exposures at different ISOs to get more range (especially for m42). For example this: http://goo.gl/ABUVd was about 30 frames of 45sec exp at each of ISO1600, ISO3200 and ISO6400 plus a heap of dark frames and all stacked in DeepSkyStacker.
I've always been tempted by Magic Lantern but never really needed it as I don't do any serious video stuff, I like the idea of a built in intervalometer though.
Yeah sweet im deffinately going to start playing around with all that... on the night i was just stoked that i could see the dam thing ahahahaha! Yeah man magic lantern is boss! although it plays up, for instance on the night it wasnt letting me go for the nice longer exposures that my allignment could have handled but its soooooooo worth a looksie and a play! its great for lightning photography too!
It craps all over my first image Ben! Off to a good start, now watch you go from strength to strength. Make sure you listen to the advice of these fine people on IIS when it comes to processing your stacked image. There's a wealth of experience here to draw from.
Nice image Ben well done indeed!! The nebula and colours look great!! Is this a combination of lights and darks or just lights?
Seriously Well done! I remember looking at my first ever sub of M42 and nearly fell of my chair at a the image on the LCD on the back of my camera, very memorable
WOW! this is amazing feedback and encouragement! thanks soooo much I will take onboard as much as my wacko brain allows! Carlos! Its umm... 50 lights and 15 darks ive done a revised image with all 98 lights and 34 darks which has dramaticly improved the core data and not much else has changed but still no idea if the method im using to "stack" in PS is effective to the same extent as DSS (pretty safe to say its not) but will find out when I can get over to Sam's place again and use his DSS H ma babez (NH) im in Perth for church conference, im representing the ACT youth Pastors
ok so not as dramatic as mentioned and not sure why all this extra red around the edges... but here is the revised (still non dss) version of all my lights and darks taken on the night.
My first ever image... you guessed it... M42 NoH8 ;)
I will take onboard as much as my wacko brain allows! Carlos! Its umm... 50 lights and 15 darks 
