FenlandPaul

Great framing and a super image! You can join the club on ruined subs due to houses / trees etc. I also recently took all my flats with the lens cap still on 🤦‍♂️

Great colours. 👍

Nice to get the Hyades in there as well! 👍

Thank you Mark.

With the next couple of weeks looking to be dogged with cloud, I decided to capture Mars and Pleiades while I still could. I had about window of about an hour before moonlight started to get intrusive, and even then I was fighting with gradients (hence quite a tight crop for 135mm). But I'm pleased with the result and the gorgeous colour contrast of these two. Canon 6D with Samyang 135mm at f/2.8, 77x 60s subs with darks and flats at ISO800 on a StarAdventurer Pro. Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop. Feedback, hints and tips welcome as always!! ☺ 20210228 Mars and Pleiades edit 1.tif

No - I only paid what was quoted - no other charges. This was before Brexit, so not entirely sure on whether that would change things. In my experience the prices were very good indeed. Very recently, however, I bought a lens from a fellow forum member in Germany and was charged import VAT by the carrier. Nothing the seller could have foreseen, but just saying for transparency.

Hi Richie, I purchase mine in October from a company called Tecobuy, who I think ship from Hong Kong. It cost £328.99 It took about 3 weeks to arrive I believe. Mine has been a good example, and I don’t know how I would have fared if I had problems with it. Online you’ll see mixed reviews on product quality and customer service, but they’re undeniably the cheapest place to buy new. I did well with them, and am considering going back for a 24mm f/1.4 If you’re prepared to take what may be a bit of a risk, it’s great value for money. But proceed with a level of caution.

Eureka!! Mostly I use fully manual lenses (e.g. Samyang) so hadn’t realised that - now all makes sense, and turns out I was shooting at f/3.5 (bit embarasssing!!). Thank you. That opens up (no pun intended) a lot of possibilities!

Thank you - great tip. So it’s the subs that are blown out rather than the processing then. *looks at tonight’s forecast 🧐* So I may be wrong on this new (used) 200mm lens, but I can see no way to stop down the aperture with an inbuilt diaphragm - please tell me I’m being incredibly stupid and missing something!!

Thank you. It's a fixed aperture lens (which I hadn't actually appreciated before acquiring it!), so it was at f/2.8. I'm actually ok with a level of diffraction spike (long-time Newtonian user!) but these are maybe a bit "busy" - I haven't really decided yet what I think of them.

And here's the final flattened TIFF file (for those who like to explore at high res). 20210210 Orion Nebula (Final - flattened).tif

I recently acquired a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 lens from a fellow SGLer and, incredibly, the night after it arrived was stunningly clear and it was a new moon. So it was great to give it a go on the Orion Nebula with my modded Canon EOS 450D mounted on a Star Adventurer. I took 178x 30s subs at ISO800 and stacked the best 90% in DSS with darks and flats. Processed in Photoshop. Clearly the central region is blown out, something that I struggled to control in processing and it might benefit from blending with some shorter subs (bit beyond me at the moment, that!). I wish I'd framed it a bit better to get the Flame, but I was keen to centre the main nebula to counter any dodgy polar alignment. Maybe next time. Anyway, keen for any hints, tips etc please!

Great stuff Geof and you’re welcome. You’re correct that if you’re using a tracker then the foreground would blur anyway (sorry, I’d missed that) but it’s amazing what you scan do with shorter exposures at high ISO and some stacking to reduce noise. It’s not tracked-exposure depth and quality, but it’s still remarkable and with the added benefit that you don’t have to lug your SA to that lovely landscape site!! All the best with it!

As it happens, there was a good tutorial video posted about it a few days ago. Or I highly recommend this guy, who also explains it well (plus his pictures are absolutely stunning!).

I’ve been super-impressed with this lens. Here’s a couple of images with a modified Canon 450D (Orion) and Canon 6D (Pleiades) over the last few weeks. I’m not very experienced in deep sky (although long-time observer) but I found the Samyang a delight and very forgiving to use.

It’s a free stacking software so it helps with signal-to-noise. But its greatest feature is that you can simply mask the sky (you colour it in with you mouse) and can “freeze” the ground so that you don’t end up with blurred foreground. It has the capacity to load dark and flat frames in it as well. I find it very simple and intuitive. I use it in almost all of my starscape images, like the one below.

That combo shows a lot of potential based on those single frames! As soon as you get stacking, with maybe some foreground interest, in something like Sequator you’ll be away! Wide field DSLR suits my tastes very well, and has the advantage of being more forgiving on processing precision (in my opinion) - I suspect I’d be a bit hamfisted with good quality cooled camera data!

I hadn't been expecting a clear sky last night, but we got one for a couple of hours that gave me the opportunity to quickly set up the Star Adventurer in the back garden. It was a little hazy, in Bortle 4/5 skies, but I managed 76x 1 minute subs with my Canon 6D and Samyang 135mm lens at f/2.8 and ISO800. I captured some darks and flats too. Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop. I would like to go deeper on this object, particularly for the "muckiness" in its locality, but as a starting point I'm reasonably happy. Deep sky isn't something I've done a lot of, but it's nice to learn. I'd welcome feedback, tips etc. Thanks!

Lovely composition Paul. Reminds me of An American Werewolf in London! 😂

I’ve had a pair of these for a year and they’re great. Mainly use them for fiddling with cameras at night now, but before that they were great while threading filters onto eyepieces etc. Hands appreciably warmer than constantly removing ostensibly warmer, but more cumbersome, gloves.

Gorgeous picture.

A warm welcome from a fellow Fenlander!

So excited about this. Landscape astrophotography has turned my Astro-mojo back up to 11 over the last few months, so this is going to be fantastic!!

That’s a terrific image! I did a similarly framed image a week or so ago but yours is definitely something to aspire to! 👏👏

Fascinating - thanks for posting!