The night before last i had a bit of a play with the Canon 300mm F/2.8, and as usual i did not concentrate on one subject for the night, but got a bit carried away with the clear sky, and actually did five. widefields
All were taken with the 300mm and 5D, @ 500 ISO, mounted on the G11 and guided with Philips Toucan, each was a stack of 10 images each, at EXP of 1 minute for M42, and 1 minute 20 seconds for the other two, being Eta Carinea, and The LMC.
All images are as taken, and not cropped, and were processed in Image Plus, with a little Digital Development introduced.
Please be critical and comment, either way, I need to learn.
Did you do darks and flats?
There's an awful lot of vignetting!
They're very nice and sharp images. However the composition of M42 could've been better placed to fit in the flame + horsehead which are in the bottom left corner.
Great stuff Leon! This is exactly the type of photography I'm going to concentrate for a while - using my 300ED Nikkor and the little Tak mount. There's a lot of great stuff to capture without a telescope attached. Now to wait for clear skies again......
Yea there is Mike, Hmmmm, I did do darks, but alas, I didn't get to do any flats.
Maybe I should have done some cropping after all, I think I will have to look out for that, but that is what i want to hear, comments so that i can learn.
I think you've done a good job here Leon. Now that you're guiding, it makes a difference. Data looks good. I'm sure there is a lot of detail in the full size originals. As the others have said, flats would certainly improve the image quality.
I think you could have framed the Orion shot better (the one in your first post) as you've nearly chopped off the horse and flame in the bottom left corner. You could have quite easily achieve a similar composition to that of Phil's nice post. Overall, good work mate. Get your flats sorted and I feel certain we'll see some killer images coming from you in the future.
EDIT: Sorry to repeat the M42 framing which Mike picked up.
Last edited by jase; 05-12-2007 at 04:16 PM.
Reason: EDIT
Thanks Jase, Your encouragement is much appreciated, I have to admit i get a bit carried away at the scope, and have to train myself to concentrate on no more than one object at a time.
I think this is where I'm coming unstuck, I see the clear sky and get quite excited and go for it, and now tonight, is clear again, what will I do
I then end up with a mixed bag of image data, and so on.
I will not shoot more than one
I will not shoot more than one
I will not shoot more than one
Nice stuff leon.
The vignetting is more obvious on the thumbnails than the full size images I think, but the crops are very nice - it's that crappy 300mm lens you're using!
Look mate I'll take it off your hands if you like - save you the headaches!!!!!!!!!
Still love that "fizzy" LMC!
Doug
Doug if i snuff it over night it is yours, thanks for the comments mate, yep, this vignetting is a pain. change back to the Tak tonight, it is brilliant clear skies again
The cropped images look very nice Leon. The background maybe a touch red but only a tiny bit? The only thing is get your flat field happening like already mentioned and your images will jump a leap ahead.
cheers ...
Just cloned out M42 done gaussian of about 10 pixels saved as flat opened up the M42 >apply image >set blending mode to subract, then adjusted brightness and contrast or levels..No vignetting.
wouldn`t work with to many bright subjects but like the Eta carina!
Hope you don`t mind.
cheers
widefields
change back to the Tak tonight, it is brilliant clear skies again 
