Look what my wife did to my camera !!!

[melsky]

She modded it for me, bless her

So here are the results of my first test with the Canon 550D with the hot mirror removed. Friday night / Saturday morning was a cracker.

I started the evening shooting IC 1396 , I took 8 frames of 180 sec on the 550D and 8 frames of 180 sec on an unmodded 600D as a comparison.

I ended up combining the two sets of data to produce the image. By about 2am Sagittarius was high enough to have a go at the Lagoon and Trifid

only 24 minutes worth of data was captuered before the lightening sky stopped play but in between times I used the 600D to grab a set of the supernova in M51.

Everything was shot @ 1600 iso with a 200mm lens mounted on the Astrotrac. Not bad for one night of imaging at this time of year.

I owe my wife a big thank you and I guess a meal or two.

Mel

Comments welcome

[cloudbuster]

wish i could find me a lady who would mod my 20d for me!!! Lol. Lovely pics Mel....nicely presented too!

[jsigone]

she's a keeper along w/ those images:D

[Merlin66]

Which lens did you use?

[Psychobilly]

Canon 200mm f2.8L probably ...

Nice "scrollable" pics by the way

[beamish]

Superb pictures !!

there's no way my wife would even understand what was being asked of her

[AndyUK]

What they all said above really - I'm extremely impressed...! 8x3 min subs to get images of this quality...? Superb... (And that's a beautiful lens you have there...)

[Thelonious]

That's amazing. I was expecting to see a wrecked camera, something like this http://www.picturesofdigitalcameras.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Broken-Camera.jpg

[shaunster]

That looks great, M8/20 looks really good to me and begs for more time to be spent on it, it could be awsome!!

[Adamski]

Amazing. When looking at the sky with the naked eye you see quite a lot of stars, but with images like those it's truly mind blowing to see how many more there actually are.

[lukebl]

Awesome images, and where does one find a wife like that?

[The Stoat]

My wife thinks Mod'ing involves scooters & wearing hooded coats. Fantastic images too!

[RogerTheDodger]

Lovely images

[FairviewSteve]

Fantastic pictures, great work!

[ollypenrice]

Wow, terrific. Those are a great first light. Quite a scale on the sky, too.

Olly

[Domis]

Wonderful pics and a wonderful wife to boot, you sir are truly blessed.

[Spr]

Very nice Mel, the M8/M20 is a cracker.

Darren