pipnina

Just got my first roll of Kodak Ektar developed in 35mm format. I took some astro shots and while i can't get them quite right I feel they're still worth sharing!

First is this star trail shot from a local beach. 24mm lens so pretty wide angle. I can't get the shadows to stop looking red though. I don't have a proper negative scanning software so I am just trying to fix it manually. All I did here was colour balance and some contrast enhance. Was about a 40-50m exposure.

This was a tracked shot of orion with my 50mm lens. My scanning job again seems less than perfect with it being a bit out of focus. Nonetheless barnard's loop, M42, flame, horsehead, rosette, and SH2-264. I dare say either my brain is wishfully thinking or the witch head is in there too!

I provide it here both with only contrast and colour balance improvements and with a pixinsight gradient removal, to show how the film natively recorded the scene as well as what I was able to extract from it easily. Even the new pix gradient tool didn't tackle this image perfectly, I am not experienced enough with it yet to get perfect results.

Finally I have one with the very nice 135mm f3.5 canon FD lens. Aside from a bit of blue fringing this lens handles astro very nicely. Nice detail starting to show up in M42 and the horse's head itself becomes visible as well as some veins in the flame. I couldn't get the image to look neutral in pix so I had to settle for it either looking blue or orange... Not sure why!

I intend to try shots like this again but with my medium format kit. Ektar proves to be a very capable film stock for astro and the raw sensitivity to h-alpha puts any unmodified DSLR or mirrorless to shame.

My RisingCam 571 is still the much more sensible choice of course. But I am having a lot of fun with film anyway!

I noticed a strange vignette on my halpha filter during the last imaging session, and shon a torch down the tube to see if it were a spider or some such. Horrifyingly I saw spiderweb like fungus had grown to cover a sizable portion of the filter. I images RGB that night but the other day I opened the filter wheel to see Multiple filters affected, red in particular but none as severely as the halpha. On chroma's website they say acetone or pure alcohol is suitable but while my acetone did remove fungus from one filter, it left a misty haze behind and so I stopped in case the impurities caused further issues!

During this operation multiple filters seemed to have snapped or cracked retainer rings. I have to  admit they looked cheap rubbish when I installed them from the zwo kit but I didn't expect to find £3000 worth of chroma filters held in by the screws alone...

I don't seem to have any spare clips so if they're available I will have to find replacements I suppose, as I will need to remove the filters properly to give them the thorough delicate clean they need to avoid damage but I can't reasonably put them back with broken retaining clips.

My next idea was to use distilled water from my film development station, which is very good stuff and leaves my negatives in pristine conditions of cleanliness as the final rinse. Pipetting it onto the filters to cause remaining dirt or residue to rinse off.

Maybe using the acetone or a more pure acetone or alcohol would be better?

At the same time I have to find a way to remove dried super glue from a panic repair to my EAF bracket that spilled onto the filter wheel. Acetone seems to dissolve it but so slowly I'd be there all year. I am terrified of damaging the paintwork and am trying to avoid scraping or sandpaper...

Oh dear oh dear. I've often cursed myself for buying chromas instead of far cheaper but nearly identical Baader or Astronomik but now with fungus issues I'd really really rather have cheaper filters that would be less stressful to clean!

Thanks in advance for advice!

James

6 hours ago, Nightfly said:

This is two 50 minute exposures combined to form a mosaic.  This resulted in an  increases the field size, and provided an output at the level of large format. 

The film is Superia 100 which was $5.00 a roll at the time.

The image highlights LeGentil 3, which is often confused with the Northern Coal Sac in Cygnus.  Because of its high density of low level information,  we can make out the delicate tendrils within this dark nebulae.  

This was 12 years ago with color film.  Compare with modern digital efforts to appreciate the prowess of this process.  That, and the color fidelity of analog. 

One key difference touted with digital is the lack of reciprocity failure.  While this is true, how much does the digital work flow depend on stacking to counter accumulated noise?  And while taking light frames, dark frames, bias frames, etc... do we really have shorter exposures after all? Film may suffer from the effect, however - once the single exposure is registered on film, it is full of information that can be extracted from within.  

Look around.  At the top of the frame, the icy blue of the Iris Nebula is clearly visible in this wide-field image - so is the Cacoon on the lower left.  As are so many more.  Check out the delicate colors of each of the stars, especially the brighter members seen.  Each star has its own subtle color and brightness.  That,  and the immense magnitude penetration of the image, which exceeds 13th magnitude. Nothing is lost in the noise or mottle normally associated with modern digital subframes.

The delicate red and blue shadings of the stellar background are real.  The film is picking up lots of low level information. But, it is the delicate tendrils of LeGentil 3 that do it for me.

 

 

 

 

To what extent do you process a mosaic like this? I would need to do complex things like background extraction for wide field work like this normally.

I assume this was with your dual pentax 67 rig, what lenses and aperture did you use, and if you stopped down did you use special stop rings instead of the in-lens blades?

It's certainly better than a lot of DSLR images I've taken, albeit those were on an old camera at APS-C format so about 9x less capturing area per exposure.

If I had skies as dark as yours presumably are I'd be most pleased too haha.

1 hour ago, Swoop1 said:

To my eye, celluloid film is far better for background gradient. GHoing to the cinema to watch a Sci Fi film, the stepping down from bright to dark on a passing space ship for example is very obvious whereas well managed celluloid has no noticeable gradient.

I used both film and digital cameras professionally on covert surveillance work and public order evidence gathering.

The benefit of instant result checking was a major plus for digital as was only having to shove in another card on a bad day at a protest or football match. Trying to load a fresh film whilst wearing double layer fire retardent gloves, cowering in a shallow doorway or hiding behind a shield whilst looking through a very fogged up visor (anti mist treatments are only so effective) and having bricks, bottles, petrol bombs etc landing all around was certainly an experience and aquired skill- and that was only training. Follow that with hours (or sometimes days) of paperwork once you receive back the product of sometimes 30 to 40 36 exposure film canisters to sort out the correct exhibit handling procedures and collating the product with audio commentary and recordings from radio transmissions etc.

I'd do wet film evidence gathering work again tomorrow though, given the chance. A sadly declining skill as most EGT seems to be video these days.

Sorry- a bit of a diversion from film based astrophotography.

Impressive nonetheless

Sort of surprised if you'd shoot so many rolls in one go that you didn't end up with a camera that had one of these bad boy backs on it haha

11 minutes ago, tomato said:

I remember a TV programme discussing the advent of digital photography (late 1980s I think) where it was resolutely stated that pixel counts would never match the grains in a film emulsion…

I'm not so sure about this horseless carriage business either, sounds like a fad to me! 🤣

23 hours ago, Nightfly said:

Agreed.  The technology today is simply astounding, and the results beyond the dreams of amateurs even just 20 years ago.  As the self-appointed spokesperson and modern day practitioner of analog astrophotography, I yield to digital.  

That being said, I have not been able to let go of my craft.  If I had made the leap to digital twenty years ago, I'm sure I would be making "better" images.  But, since this my avocation, and in that I find my work gratifying, there's really no reason to change my ways.  

One big reason for me personally is the amount of gear, software, computer equipment, and lots and lots of acquisition time necessary to make a good go of it.  My sessions are quiet and dark, as it was done in the days when Edward Emerson Barnard made his great images atop the new Mount Wilson site in 1905.  I find the sessions very relaxing and my mind quite still during exposures.  No screens or bleeps to ruin my attitude.  A respite from technology, which surrounds each and every one of us.

I recently made investments to continue my analog work flow.  My work has no peer, as I am pretty much alone in this field.   I do communicate with about three others that are still doing it.  I happen to have pristine skies, and that makes the work very much worth the time I invest in each image.  

For those outside of the analog photography community,  it would seem film is dead.  That's far from the truth.  There is a renaissance that has been happening for many years now.  Film is very much alive. 

 

I've just had a proper look through your Flickr and I have to say your collection of BW film images, not to mention the astro ones, are simply inspiring.

I am still early on in my film astro attempts (despite working on it for a year now, cursed weather!) but having poured over datasheets it seems either Ilford Delta 400 or Fomapan 400 would be the best choices for astro work despite their high reciprocity failure, simply because they are the rare black and white films that have the deeper red sensitivity for Halpha.

I can imagine Acros/Acros II being pretty good in that it's fine grain and has no reciprocity failure up to 120s and only 1/2 a stop is lost afterwards, but if we factor in the removal of reciprocity from your 60 minute image (45min?) and then take into account the improved sensitivity of Foma400, meaning it would need about 20-ish minutes of exposure, and then factor in my estimate for Foma400's reciprocity failure factor (roughly MT^1.454) we come to about 15 minutes saved in exposure time, at the cost of some grain, but in doing so we also gain a lot of hydrogen sensitivity which Acros lacks entirely. The difference would be even more stark (I intend to verify once weather improves) with Delta400 as it can reach 500 iso in microphen vs Foma400's 320, and has a lower reciprocity factor of 1.41 while (if the datasheet is accurate) still having Ha sensitivity.

Not intended as a lecture, but I am curious at your process and reasoning, maybe you leave out hydrogen purely for artistic purposes?

Thanks for your time.

Here's a negative (Foma400) I am not yet ready to scan properly and as such can only provide a simple phone scan. But I have high hopes for it.

Foma400 in microphen, 16m at f3.5, Bronica ETRS with Zenzanon 150mm pe.

19 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

In most circumstances it seems to me that digital is the hands down winner, but not in absolutely all. A well-made slide film image, seen projected, has a scale and intensity, a verisimilitude, a feeling, which digital doesn't have. It's like being under the night sky, only more so.  The digital images that I and others make go deeper, contain more information, etc etc - but a projected slide can have a little something else.

Olly

I shot a roll of Velvia 100 last year and although I butchered the exposure on most of the images I have to agree with your assessment 100%

Looking at one of the good slides I have placed on my flat panel is pretty magical. No manipulation required besides that which was baked into the emulsion at the factory.

I think when HDR tech catches up we'll be able to make a similar effect on a digital screen. I think velvia has a contract ratio of something like 3/4k:1 whereas a very good SDR digital screen has 1.2k:1, and looks washed out in comparison. I tried viewing my astro photos on the OLED TV but the peak brightness isn't there to make it pop, and the TV has a not-exactly-calibrated contrast curve which made my deep grey sky background black clipped which looked quite ugly.

A bit like how it took LCD screens a long time to truly surpass CRTs on all fronts, I think we still have a bit left to go before digital displays beat the last edge case holdouts of slide quality.

34 minutes ago, Nightfly said:

Hello,

 

I happened to see this thread from last year.  I concur.  Film is truly dead.  I don't recommend that anyone even try it.  It's a lost cause. 

That being said,  a shot from last October from my home observatory. 

I may post a new thread with some images I've made recently.  

Cheers!

Jim

 

Is that a large format sheet? I'd love to know what your setup is!

I have never used either of those scopes, however I started out in a similar price bracket with a skywatcher 130/900 newtonian on an EQ2 mount. For £140 total it wasn't bad but like you it did cause me to tug at my hair and often I went back home unsatisfied because I didn't know what I was doing yet.

But really just because a piece of kit isn't optimal for a task, doesn't mean you can't enjoy it for said task!

I enjoyed trying to take photos of jupiter and M42 through my 250PX dob with my Nikon DSLR, despite it very much not being the right piece of kit for the task! With time you'll get to know the scope you already have, the strengths and weaknesses and eventually the time will come where a bigger and undoubtedly more expensive kit that improves on the "strengths" or excels at the "weaknesses" will meet both your eye and your wallet. As happened with me after a year or so of using the 130/900 when I sold it and moved on to my 250PX which I've used for the last 10-ish years.

Try not to get too stressed out and move at the more comfortable pace, the sky will always be there (even if we can't always see it...)

I hope a good alternative to the ASI Air is released by someone. I am quite tempted by the device but since I have a ToupTek-based camera (RisingCam 571) I cannot use it, and find the idea of being restricted in terms of equipment manufacturer a little upsetting. Albeit somewhat understandable since as a developer you cannot control quality of other manufacturer's equipment with your control device.

I have had no end of trouble with other forms of control so I welcome any decent additions to the market!

I think a typical laptop screen won't produce good flats because the light intensity and colour of an LCD varies by the angle you view it from, and this becomes much more drastic the closer you get.

iPads and Phones etc use AMOLED screens which do not have this problem and may produce better flats.

I decided to put my unmodified Nikon D810 and 50mm f1.8G lens to the test on 7th Jan for this challenge by focusing on the region between the Pleiades and Auriga. I collected to the tune of 2.5 hours of data in 30s exposures with the lens wide open @ 800iso, which was about the limit of exposure under my sky conditions. Tracked on star adventurer with USB battery & no guiding.

Unfortunately, strong gradients which I am still not good enough to correct, plus the lens' intense seagull stars at the edge of the frame forced me to crop the image heavily. To this end, I decided to narrow my focus to the California nebula and nearby dust clouds further down in Taurus.

Having made this decision I applied PixInsight SPCC, ABE, and then StarNet2 removal, and ran NoiseX on the starless image and BlurX on the star mask.

At this stage I was unhappy with the pale pink colour in the California and exported the starless image to a TIFF to edit in GIMP. I used LAB colour mode to remove the blue and increase the contrast in the red in the area of the nebula with the lasso select tool. I had to spend a lot of time doing trial and error here to ensure I avoided making red out of nowhere, and after a lot of flicking back and forth from edited to unedited images eventually found both a healthy (hopefully not TOO healthy) red for the nebula without inventing colour.

I then exported this reddened image back into PixInsight and experimented with star brightness before combining into a final image, then applied SCNR on green.

However I was still not satisfied as some horizontal banding was noticable, some odd 2nd or 3rd order gradient effects which I could not remove no matter how I changed my process, until I decided to take the final image, remove the stars from that again and run ABE. To my surprise by increasing the "function degree" to 9 the weird effects were detected. I don't know if the gradients have 100% been removed but I am able to look at the image without them staring at me now so I decided to use this as my final version for submission to the challenge!

This is the first time I've gotten a truly "good" (by my standards) image from an unmodified DSLR and camera lens. I think this may open me up to shooting more images in this form as this 10 year old cam and budget lens have exceeded expectations for me.

I have been relatively lucky with my current mini PC until the last night I used it a few weeks back... Where it got too cold (or wet from dew?) that the wifi dongle died. Not sure what to do about it now as I could end up just feeding the british weather £5 wifi dongles haha.
Maybe a plastic bag to keep the heat in better? I don't know... I worry anything else around it would block signal.

Your issue I think could be the hard drive experiencing issues, try plugging the drive into another machine and see if the issue persists?

I really like the last one. It almost feels like I could fall into it.

1 hour ago, mackiedlm said:

Thats really nice. I dont see a whole lot of difference between your warma nd cold versions?

At 12 hours with a IMX571 you should for sure be able to bring out some IFN. Are you removing the stars and Stretching with GHS - that woul be the first steps I'd try but you'd need to do some masking (GAME script would work well) to really bring it out.

For sure there's IFN data in there, but even with noise-x it's proved very difficult to bring into the image in a nice way due to a lack of signal. I'll have a look at the GAME script to see what I can do, thanks!

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

Looks really good. I think I prefer the top one. It's only a slight difference though.

I think I too prefer the top one, although yes the difference is slight. They sit on the balance between "too muddy and warm" and "too sterile" i think.

32 minutes ago, Bluemoonjim said:

One could be forgiven for thinking they are the same image  
I think your images sum up the tribulations of astrophotography. We can drive our selves mad with fretting about incremental changes and lose sight of the magic of viewing what is out there.
The pursuit of perfection with imperfect means.

Lovely image, well done

Indeed, I find myself perpetually frustrated by a lot of my work as it never quite lives up to what I wanted to produce, but every image I work on brings me a little closer I think to something that'll make me happy, but there's still a few areas I need to work on and starless processing is one of them!

Having looked back at the image with my monitor at the more comfortable 0 brightness setting I notice the IFN becomes totally invisible, but since I processed the image at 100% monitor brightness, trying to push the data further resulted in it looking a bit overcooked.

I think this edit is probably better for lower brightness screens- a difficult balance to strike! Maybe when HDR displays become more common it will be easier to create images that look the close to the same for everyone who views them "properly".

I spent a lot of time twiddling with this in PixInsight, working out the order i should calibrate, background extract, denoise, how much to stretch vs curve manupulate etc. Despite knowing there's a fair bit of IFN in this image I just can't seem to bring it out to shine despite my 12h of data. At this point I am not sure if I would be best served spending the next few clear nights (whenever they appear) taking luminance frames to try and improve the signal as quickly as possible, or if I should continue capturing RGB for as long as I can in hopes it improves sufficiently...

Either way I likely need 4 or even 8x the SNR in this data to resolve that IFN clearly. It makes me think I've been doing something wrong during capture or processing since others seem to draw it out of this region nicely, but it could just be my seaside city being a murky mess!

I couldn't 100% decide on which temperature I liked best, warmer or cooler, so here's both:

Tips welcome as right now I am not sure where I need to be going with this haha.

Happy hunting

Just now, Leti Theobald said:

Thank you, I'll try that, though not great that is out of focus! I have an autofocuser so weird that is out of focus, maybe I need it to refocus more often through the night

Perhaps, but I have found autofocus routines need to be relatively close to good focus in order to be effective, especially when I owned a newtonian reflector.

I would suggest manually getting focus close, and then running the autofocus routine and seeing how it handles the scene, does its output look correct in a quick test image? etc.

Try and avoid the step-out that it might use taking you too far from ideal focus as a starting point.

Unlike mirrorless cameras which can use phase-detect focusing and at long focal lengths could provide fast and accurate focusing information, we are purely limited to contrast-based AF which is very slow and prone to errors. We need to experiment with this as astrophotographers and find out where the limits are.

For instance in my setup, if ideal focus was at step count 8385, and the current focus position was at 8320, then running the autofocus routine might move focus out to 8820 and start working back down in 100 step intervals. This could easily prove too much error from the ideal position by creating large donut stars that the computer can't identify properly, leading to a bogus AF result.

However if you tune the step-out multiple to be lower, and lower the step interval to maybe 50 steps, it might move from 8385 to 8500 and be able to focus properly.

It's worth bearing in mind that the only movement in your imaging train when it comes to focus postion comes from thermal expansion and switching filters, so the real difference between the highest and lowest authentic result is not big- could be as much as 100 steps between a very cold night (in the southern UK I define that at -5c) and a very warm night (in UK i'd say 20c).

It's all about tuning that eventually allows you to just let the AF do its thing with confidence that it has worked. Personally though I always stick around for the first image to come back at least before letting it go by unattended!

I wish you the best of luck with the images you currently have, and the no doubt far improved result you will get next time!

I believe your issue is that your images simply aren't close to focus! PixInsight likely cannot recognise the stars in your image as stars as a result.

For instance this bright star in an unstretched image near the center of the frame. This donut shape is typical of the pattern given when a reflector telescope is out of focus (the point of light widens into a circle with a harsh border in lenses, called bokeh, however due to the central obstruction in reflectors a hole appears in the middle creating these frustrating donuts!)

I used the Resample process in Pix to reduce the image size to 25%, thereby making the stars more star-shaped. They then registered immediately with the settings you see in the screenshot.

I hope this helps!

Hi

It's hard to diagnose this issue without more info.

If you can supply 3+ of your raw images (of the same colour) I can load them into my PixInsight and see if the images need tweaked settings to register properly.

As a shot in the dark: Have you tried registering them manually as a test of the registering setting by going to "process-> image registration -> star alignment" ?

Load only 2/3 images and test it on those. change one setting at a time and once you find a good setting use that in the WBPP script.

one workaround that could be implemented is to "flash" the light frames by simply adding ADU to them in post. I belive PixInsight has this option (called I think "output pedestal") but I am not sure if Siril has this feature.
I DID have a python program someone wrote for me that took FITS files and would let you add/subtract ADU from them singularly or in a batch but I can't get it to work any more.

By adding a flat ADU to the light frames you do not upset the effect of dark frame subtraction but get to avoid the black clipping.

This works as long as your initial image is not black clipped. One way to avoid this with narrowband I should think is to shoot a high ISO like 12800, which will cause even small samples of light to push all of the pixels above 0 in a reasonable exposure time.

Yeah this seems to be exactly what's happening...
I got PixInsight to convert the raw files for one light frame and one flat frame to TIFF in order to strip it of most metadata. When I calibrated and processed with the tiff files everything behaved exactly as I expected it should, the flat calibration worked perfectly and background extraction flattened the image completely.
So I guess I need to convert files from raw to tiff if I want to process D810 images for astro... interesting...

12 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I’ve used my Nikon D800E with my epsilon and the flats are similar.  It’s because it’s full frame and the issue is light reflecting off the edge of the mirror (when it’s flipped up taking an exposure) creating flats that don’t match the lights. Careful processing might help mitigate it a little but only by physically removing the mirror box can you resolve it completely.

Now this is interesting... After you brought this up I looked at my flat RAWs in both pix and rawtherapee...

The same file, stretched in a different program seemingly causes a massively different result?

The bottom image seems like it would cause the issue in my final stack, whereas the top one seems totally innocuous!

Could the camera be embedding something in the raw file that programs can tap into to perform "correction"? Why would PIX apply it in one context (calibration) but not another (viewing)?

Most puzzling, I am going to have to delve further into this...

I have been trying to get something to enter for the 50mm lens challenge, and figured my new-old DSLR kit would be a pretty good setup to enter with... However I seem to be encountering issues with calibration. All I've taken is flats and lights, as I thought bias/darks often were not useful for DSLRs due to a lack of temperature control and ADU offset? It seemingly worked a bit better than this in my D3200/Sigma 105 lens but I am not sure what's causing this issue.

As you can see in the stacked and autostretched image above the corners seem quite bright with maybe skyglow, the lower quadrent is comparatively dark and the middle has this odd glowing bow, and between the green and grey it's actually purple. I have to put this down to flat calibration issues as the un-calibrated lights alone produce a very normal (but highly vignetted) image. Sadly the stack below I forgot to turn on debayering but it does show the image coming out as I would expect, no odd shapes in the vignette that might cause the issue above, meaning I must be doing something wrong in capture or setting something incorrectly in pix? My flats should have been at the same focus, aperture, iso etc as my lights but at a very short exposure time due to the fast lens and high ISO (800) of my lights, I think 1/4000 putting the center of the image in the middle of the histogram.

Any tips from more experienced pix + DSLR shooters greatly appreciated! 3 lights and 3 flats in the files below if anyone wants a closer gander!

Many thanks

_DSC1087.NEF _DSC1088.NEF _DSC1089.NEF _DSC1060.NEF _DSC1061.NEF _DSC1062.NEF

7 minutes ago, PhilB61 said:

Have you considered boxing all the heavy bulky stuff up in advance and then having it couriered out to you after you arrive at your new location, probably no more expensive than what it would cost you in selling your current gear and then having to buy replacements in Europe. 

Sadly I'm highly likely to need to transport it some distance & without a car, at most I'd be able to have a motorbike for some time I'd guess.

I'd be going to Nordrhein Westfallen in an area where I'd be on 4th floor and have to lug all that down the stairs and to a close by park! Not great if my kit weighs 40+KG haha. I do certainly hope after a while I'd be able to move to a different part of that area with either a garden or at least roof access but I'd have to make do for a while!

It could even be a matter of cut right back to basics but I want to consider all options first...

Hi!

I might need to relocate to another country in Europe this year, and as such I am faced with the necessity of parting with my current setup as it would be impossible to take with me at all let alone take on a plane. I am wondering now if besides setting my kit on a star adventurer with a DSLR lens, are there setups I could build that would fit into motorcycle and plane luggage capacity?

Currently I have:

HEQ5-PRO (The most obvious thing to go)

130mm f6 triplet (The next most obvious thing to go)

RisingCam 571 with ZWO filter wheel and chroma LRGB-SII-Ha-OIII filters (I want to keep this if possible, possibly the least sensible financial decision of my life...)

Mini PC (maybe 20x20x8cm)

Pegasus Power Box Advanced

50mm f4 finder with ZWO 120mm mini.

I have thought as a first step about swapping my 130mm triplet for something like the WO Pleiades 68, despite its higher cost it is a faster scope (so better for shorter sessions that might need a commute) compact at only 34cm in length but still relatively long at 260mm focal length. The only issue here besides cost would be that it is slightly faster than the f4 rating on the chroma filters? I don't know how much the 0.2 fs will affect their performance but hopefully they would still be usable?

I could probably fit the pegasus box, my ZWO EAF and the guide scope onto that easily enough. But what about power if i am going out, and my HEQ5 is still more than a little too monstrous... I have thought about one of the new ZWO AM3 mounts, maybe without the insanely priced tripod if my Manfrotto 055 could hold it, it is some beefy thing. It would mean I could disregard the need for counterweights and is nice and compact... Assuming the WO scope and guide scope and camera can fit into that 8KG limit?

Oh dear oh dear. This hobby has always proved stressful but I don't think I could give it up. If I can get a travel-ready setup then I suppose I could at least plan holidays to places with slightly more reliable conditions like rural spain, or is that wishful thinking?

I don't know what I should do at this point as my current setup hasn't been used for over 2 months thanks to the great british weather. I sometimes think this hobby is reserved for simply more fortunate countries but I feel compelled to continue regardless.

Does anyone here have thoughts? What kit are people currently using for grab and go imaging? Thanks.

Despite the 75% moon I decided to take some chances last night as the last clear night felt like a lifetime ago. My first time seeing Orion since spring started.

The main purpose was to test Kodak Ektar as an astro film stock, so after getting that going I had a general inspection of the sky that night. I must say the cold weather has brought it out nice and clearly. Not only were the stars barely twinkling at all, but typically I might expect about magnitude 4-4.2 to be my limit on a moonless night, however tonight despite the moony interference I was spotting stars of 4.5 with relative ease near Rigel and M42. When I looked further up near Perseus I could see in the most delicate of ways some stars around Mirfak, doing my absolute best to see what was going on around there and then conferring with my stellarium app I might have been spotting stars of even mag 5+! Certainly not common from home! Albeit these faint stars appeared as singular flicks of light spots in my eyes with slightly averted vision, but I still know that I have seen them and could only wish the sky would be this nice more often, or at least when the moon is not so bright!

I also directed my attention towards Andromeda to see if the good conditions might allow me any sighting of M31, alas I don't think I caught it tonight but I had moments were I wasn't sure if I was seeing the galaxy's core or the final link in the "andromeda road" of stars that starts with Mirach. Given as said star is mag 4.5 I think I was only seeing the star.

After my camera's exposure was complete I trekked back indoors and stood in front of the electric heater for a few minutes as by this point I was thoroughly chilled.

For christmas I would very much like some more clear skies please.

Good night all, and I wish you some fortune with the skies as well.