I am posting a single 3.2 minute pic, processed from the jpg, of smw using kit lens at 18mm f3,5 350D, which is in fact our first quided long exposure using a digital camera, until now, film all the way - altho its not pretty, and a bit on the red side as i like the darkmatter a lot, also didnt get focus right either - but dammit i think i will get it little shoes silvered, as it the beginning of an interesting phase maybe
the comet shot from same night was our second guided long exposure we took
it was a lot simpler than I thought it would be - weird - anyway resistence is futile as they say
Thanks Jase btw on behalf of Stewart also, I should of mentioned earlier! -
we tend to work as a duo/team on the tracked stuff, we find its easier sharing the workload (and having good company/backup in the bush/country on field trips), and it's his 11 yr/old vixen GP/C8 we hand guide with also, as we always have.
Thats a good first step Kearn!!
A little trick I do with the kit lense is to focus while still light (autofocus) on a distant object , flick to MF, then sticky tape the barrel so you can`t accidently turn the barrel and change the focus...usually works well..
Cheers Gary
Yeah'
Trying to focus those things manually is a real pain. In some other thread, someone suggested setting the camera so that only the middle focussing red light was active and then using that to autofocus on a bright star. He claimed that it worked well, but I haven't tried it yet.
Geoff
Thanks for the comments guys appreciate it! :-))
I was doing the 'manually focus, then take a test pic and check it by zooming in on back opf camera lcd monitor, keep repeating till correct, method, which worked 'ok-ish' for me with tripod shots recently, - but Stewy was getting impatient as i was up to my third attempt at getting focus right by then (i also had NR on so was making it even slower) and we were only messing around as a test at the time, and he said that'll do 'lets go' hehe -
But I noticed how good/sharp your comet shots were Gary, so your method obviously works well - and as you say Geoff, Leons shots are great too - so his method obviously works well to seems to be a few ways to go its nice to have choices
Cheers David, Andrew and Leon glad ya liked them - it was fun taking them, we've never had that luxury of reviewing what you have straight away, felt like stone/medieval age meets computers - hard to get used to that one! we were going 'uggg' as we saw the magic picture come to life! altho i still like film a lot for a few reasons -
anyway I had a go at the RAW version/converted - they sure a bit nicer again to work with when in 16 bit tIF eh, sharpening/highlights definately work better - here it tis - thanks for looking
Andrew, should mention, using NR seems to have got rid of the worst of the banding! this is an iso 1600 image (i had never used it before - I had bad experienes with the old nikons with there NR, and as a result thought it was useless on the canon for some reason, without even trying it? oh well) - but its till there if you look hard, like stretching and inverting shows it up bad - curious! NR seems to make 1600 iso like the equivelant of 800 or a 1200 anyway - strange
Yes I see what you mean, but you have to look for the banding, wasn't obvious to me right away.
The in-camera NR is a great feature indeed.
I'm not a huge fan of ISO 1600, but this obviously depends on the object being imaged and I still use it but I prefer ISO 800.
You've done very well !
Looking forward to more from you.
- but dammit i think i will get it little shoes silvered, as it the beginning of an interesting phase maybe 
btw on behalf of Stewart also, I should of mentioned earlier! -
appreciate it! :-))
seems to be a few ways to go 
