Alien 13

1 hour ago, Mr niall said:

Thanks all - following advice I've managed to picked up a new Canon EF 50mm (the newer STM version) for £89. I'll be quite honest and say the price was the deciding factor over the 40mm which does look lovely but at £89 that represents pretty brill value for money.

If I can get some half decent subs from this then the longer term plan is to pick up a Samyang 135mm but that is a significant jump in budget and focal length so the 50 will doubtless keep me going for a while!

Will report back with findings.

The 50mm STM is a lovely lens and well built too, it also has a nice focus action. I have used mine at f2.8 without issues but you do need to play around with focus and try to get it spot on at a point away from the center (this helps with any distortion in the corners).

Alan

I have wondered about this, some of the big updates are actually a completely new OS so in theory the old version could be deleted and in fact this happened to me once when the update failed to work and the nice man at MS gave me a link to the new patch ( was a brand new OS) which put the original software in an "old file folder" that I deleted after a few weeks.

Will watch the thread with interest.

Alan

It depends what you mean by good and cheap, a used Sigma 100mm macro lens is very good at astro as it the excellent Canon 70-200 f/4 L but they are not exactly cheap but as good as anything else in the range.......I paid £220 for my L lens and even came with a lens collar for tripod mounting.

Alan

P.S. the Canon 70-200 can be used wide open throughout its range for astro i.e. f/4

I never understood why everyone is not observing/imaging not only planets but even stars during the daylight, after all they dont suddenly vanish during the day, I learnt that when I took some daylight flats with my camera without the "T shirt" filter, there were hundreds of them....

Alan

Brian and Dara, does it get better than these two, I dont think so 

Alan

1 hour ago, Mark1489 said:

I managed to go out again and try the focusing away from centre...it made a huge difference and much better! I will look into this though since I still have a little bit of elongation of stars at the very bottom, I usually crop them out. What would you recommend for a D5300 and Samyang? I’m guessing all mounted to a single dovetail? 

I cant find the post at the moment but a rigid cage type structure (3D printed) was discussed in one of the Samyang 135 topics and also other tips for making the assemble more rigid.

I did note that you are using a bat mask on a DSLR with live view, in my opinion this is not good and focusing on the very faintest star in the FOV with perhaps X5 or X10 zoom activated will give better results, the focus action should effectively be on/off with the star invisible or blinking into view.

Alan

I cant believe what happened just for the most god awful sport of the rich and privileged, I always thought that any over runs etc would be put on the "red button"......................................

Alan

I have often wondered if there is another way to focus light other than reflection/refraction or if software can make the bottom of a beer glass as sharp as an ED lens...

Alan

I do like single shots rather than video myself as the whole disk wont fit when using my Mak, I do however sometimes stack three or four RAW files manually in Photoshop....

Alan

I think some people have used that lens successfully but it might need to be stopped down a little. I doubt that Samyang would know how to even make a bad lens......

Alan

16 minutes ago, Macavity said:

P.S. I'm lazy, so often use Amazon's "Evil Empire" for such things. It can be a tad
frustrating at times... What with their sometimes bizarre *grouping* of items for
delivery... the (helpful) "add on item" thing! Sometimes I spend more time trying
to "defeat" such artificial intelligence. But we digress! lol 😸

I am a big fan of Amazon, have bought lots of stuff that I didn't need but realy wanted.

I view the site as a big boys "exchange and mart" and do like a random browsing session from time to time 

Alan

I agree with John, beautiful...

Alan

The trick with these types of lenses is to focus away from the center at a point a third the distance along an imaginary diagonal...

Alan

12 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

  Of course, coma , distortion and aberration has to permit that wide aperture but in principle what I said is true???

I didnt think the Samyang had any of those issues even wide open.....

Alan

How are all your other scopes Gina? I fear the same environment would have attacked them too.

Alan

I moved from PS CS6 to Affinity a while ago as PS could no longer open the latest Canon RAW files and have not looked back, does everything realy and it even feels like PS so no real learning curve either.

Alan

I like gold and diamonds because they represent what the universe is all about, supernova and the main building block for all known life...

Alan

45 minutes ago, Gasman said:

Keep trying with my laptop and desktop pc`s but they both say up to date with 1810??.

The Microsoft web site says ` Windows 10, version 1903 is available for any user who manually selects “Check for updates” via Windows Update for all devices that do not have a safeguard hold. `

So presumably both mine do have a `safeguard hold` whatever that is??.

Steve

A quick look on the interweb seems to suggest that safeguard hold might be due to windows update detecting incompatible software or hardware, this might just be out of date drivers etc and might self correct at some point.

Alan

19 minutes ago, Grierson said:

It’s a pain in the a***e if you happen to have an 650 NVIDIA graphics card. 45 mins to upgrade, 2 hrs plus to sort out the display afterwards!!

I have not checked my NVIDIA graphics yet as my laptop runs the Intel most of the time (dual graphics cards) and then only runs the NVIDIA front end if playing games on the laptop screen so need to plug in my TV to test out the full graphics options.

Must get this looked into before my next planned gaming session.

Alan

5 minutes ago, Cornelius Varley said:

My 1803 laptop updated to 1903 yesterday. And by yesterday I mean most of yesterday, about 11 hours from start to finish.

 

Its certainly a big one, still finding little things it changed or disabled but no real problems although I think my boot up speed has increased to over 6 seconds now.

Alan

6 hours ago, Ruud said:

I had an issue with defender's tamper protection. It was switched off. I turned it back on. 

If yours was also switched off after the upgrade, you'll have a yellow instead of a green shield on your Windows Security icon in the notification area of the taskbar.

More people have this. See:

https://www.tenforums.com/antivirus-firewalls-system-security/133397-defender-tamper-protection-1903-a.html

 

Thanks Ruud, mine was turned off too.

Alan

6 hours ago, Ruud said:

After the install, my NVIDIA graphics card was reset to limited dynamic range (16-235). I had to set that back to full (0-255) to make the 'pop' return to the colours on my screen.

If you have a flatscreen and use NVIDIA you might want to try this:

Go to the NVIDIA control panel

- In Display > Change resolution > 3. Apply the following settings
   turn on the radio button 'Use NVIDIA color setting'
   Set 'Output dynamic range' to 'Full'
   Click 'Apply' at the bottom of the window

- In Video > Adjust video color setting > How do you make color adjustments?
  turn on the radio button 'With the NVIDIA settings'
  go to the tab 'Advanced' and set the dynamic range to 'Full'
  Click 'Apply' at the bottom of the window

The limited dynamic range, 16-235, is for CRT monitors (old fashioned fish bowl like monitors). CRT monitors can't handle the dynamic full range and may even get damaged by trying to do so. This is why the default is the limited range. On a flat screen, the full range looks much better.

Thanks, my lappy has both Nvdia and Intel graphics so have not noticed this issue yet but will have a look.

Alan

9 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Had one the other night don't know what it did except turn my EBay icon into an explorer icon,  removed a couple of icons that were pinned to the task bar, and disconnected WiFi but it wasn't very big.

Dave

The 1903 update did disconnect my WiFi also and had to enter my password again and changed a few icons but mostly painless.

Alan

I had it a couple of weeks ago, its more of a new OS rather than an update but all is fine with my lappy.

Alan

7 minutes ago, wesdon1 said:

Hi Alan, thanks for your comments. I must say ( as a very inexperienced newbie, i hasten to add! ) your idea sounds a little scary ? What if one didn't do the job properly and some dangerous Sun light leaked through to ones retina and caused awful permanent damage ? The thought terrifies me mate! Al;though i can see the ingenuity of the idea! If done properly, by a competent experienced amateur astronomer, it sounds like a brilliant way to Solar gaze! Thanks, Wes.

The Newt idea is not for the inexperienced but works in a similar way to the Herchel wedge, as mentioned before the projection methods are the safest form of Solar observing.

Alan