M42 with Pentax DSLR

[Tamtarn]

Thanks for commenting Mark and Ken

Originally Posted by allan gould

A really great shot. Guiding was spot on as well. Its good to see that the 70mm has a good home and doing its job. You really nailed that one.

Thanks again for selling us your 70mm Alan. It's taken a while to get everything up and running for autoguiding but it's been worth it.

Originally Posted by Rocket Boy

Excellent work guys, beautifully framed and great colours too.
Good to hear you're autoguiding now.

Keep up the great work.

Thanks Andrew yes the autoguiding makes things so much easier.....we're ecstatic

Originally Posted by iceman

That's a great shot! Very well done.

How are you saving for web? There appears to be quite a few compression artifacts..

Mike after processing we just save the image into my pictures then resize in VSO Resizer.....Is there another way?

Originally Posted by Dennis

That is a simply gorgeous portrait of this incredible region in Orion. It looks picture perfect!

Cheers

Dennis

Thanks Dennis we appreciate your positive comments

Originally Posted by iceman

Oh and was this taken through the 8"? What did you guide through?

Yes Mike taken with the Skywatcher 8" Newt guided with the Skywatcher 70x500mm which we purchased from Alan.

Originally Posted by Garyh

Very nice Barb and Dave! I have always thought those pentax DSLR`s were too noisey for nice deepsky portraits but what ever you have done keep doing it!!
very nice indeed
cheers Gary

Gary we bought the Pentax for $699 to try imaging. Since starting prime focus in April we have been really pleased with what we have achieved with the camera.

Now with autoguiding we will see how far we can push it.

[iceman (Mike)]

Barb do you process your image in Photoshop?

[Tamtarn]

Yes Mike in Photoshop CS2

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi Barb.

When you're finished working your image, save it as PS2 file (as usual), then use Image->Resize and choose 800px as the width.

Then go File->Save as Web, and drag the quality slider down until the preview size (bottom left) shows < 200k jpeg.

You'll get much less compression artifacts and your images will look tonnes better!

[Alchemy (Clive)]

just had a look, had to go back pages.... nice to see auto guiding is working, youve blended the different exposures well it looks seamless to me, 5 min exposures are here to stay it seems. look forward to more.

[Tamtarn]

Thanks Mike

Worked it out now, followed what you said but the quality slider wasn't there on the screen., but after seeing kens screen shots I clicked on the quality number and the slider came up so I could then make the adjustments.

Thanks again

Barb

[Dietmar]

very nice orion nebula and running man!

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Terrrrrific image.

[jase (Jason)]

Nicely done Barb and David. You've managed the dynamic range well. The colours presented give a natural feel to the image - visually pleasing. Keep up the good work.

[Tamtarn]

Originally Posted by Dietmar

very nice orion nebula and running man!

Thanks for commenting Dietz much appreciated.

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

Terrrrrific image.

Thanks Jeanette glad you liked it

Originally Posted by jase

Nicely done Barb and David. You've managed the dynamic range well. The colours presented give a natural feel to the image - visually pleasing. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the comments Jase. M42 is really a hard one to process. Until I can learn to align and register my short and long exposure to perform a layer mask I'll have to settle for this image at this stage.

Barb

[EzyStyles (Eric)]

beautiful shot! your images just keeps improving.

[Tamtarn]

Thanks Eric we appreciate your positive comments.
We are always looking to improve.

[danielsun]

Excellent shot!!
I know it is a hard one to capture without over exposing the core, your long and short exposures paid off for a beautiful image with plenty of outer detail!
Well done guys!!

[Tamtarn]

Thanks Daniel. We hope to eventually learn how to master Layer masking which should help us improve the detail in the core a bit more.