Southern Arena

[orestis]

Hi Everyone,

Just a widefield of the southern gems. 3x 30 sec subs on tripod stacked in dss at iso 6400.

Sorry about the quality, scaling it down to fit under 200kb has reduced the quality a lot. Second attachment is a crop of first photo which gets rid of the vignetting caused by having the lens at f/3.5, saving up for a better quality lens any recommendations?

Thanks for viewing
Cheers Orestis

[Larryp (Laurie)]

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

Hi Orestis, this is good to see what can be done with a tripod mounted camera. Did you take dark frames as well prior to stacking in DSS? On the subject of lenses, whilst it is hard to tell from the resolution of the attached image the lens that you are using looks fine. I can't notice any coma or stretched stars in the corners so it might be ok. Exactly what lens were you using?

[orestis]

Thanks gentlemen,

Rodney- Due to light cloud I only took 1 dark and I forgot that I left it on Jpeg instead of shooting in raw.

Lens used was a 15-85mm efs canon on a 550D Canon. Being still at school I don't have a job and so raising funds for this hobby is difficult considering that a descent lens doesn't go cheap.

Coma is acceptable but vignetting is terrible at fast f ratios such as this f/3.5 wide open.

thanks for the input Rodney
cheers Orestis

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

I think that you should be able to do some good work with your 550D and the 85mm zoom lens. Maybe try stopping the lens down a couple of stops would be a good idea. Take plenty of dark frames if you are shooting at 6400 or possibly try the in camera high ISO noise reduction. If you are handy with a few tools you may want to do a search on how to make a barn door tracker which would be a good way to get into tracking the stars and takeing some longer exposures.