September Sun

[Carbon60]

Finally some 'quality' sun this morning and time to capture a few AVI's. This is about the best one fom this morning's session which I've processed in monochrome and colour. I'm still optimising techniques and equipment...so, hints and tips welcome, as always.

Stu.

[Merlin66]

Looks pretty good to me!

What set-up are you using?

[hunterknox]

You're already way ahead of me but I should say the centre of the image in particular looks very crisp. Excellent focus work. Of the two I think I prefer the monochrome image, but that's just personal preference on this occasion.

[markt]

Great image! The monochrome for me aswell. Regards hints and tips - I take it this was shot using a barlow? Apart from the fact it's a close up (doh!, obviouslly!) you can also see the darkening or vignetting in the corners of the image. This is really easy to remove to get a frame of even illumination by using a flat field: Once you have your etalon, exposure, gain and gamma settings sorted move you fov to a relatively featureless part in the centre of the sun, defocus the image and then just run off an avi of whatever the normal exposure is. Go back to your region of interest, refocus and then shoot your avi. Then, in the stacking process, just feed in the flat frame in whatever software you use.

HTH,

Mark

[Carbon60]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Ken, I'm still using the BF5 for now in a linear arrangement, but that will change shortly as I have a BF15 on order from the US. Can't wait. I'm assuming that things will sharpen up around the edges with this larger filter. Thanks again for your past advice.

Mark, thanks for the information on 'flat fielding'. I'll give it a go next time I get the chance. This and the BF15 should help improve things.

Tom, I agree with you on the monochrome, although I'd like to 'crack' colouring these types of images to achieve something more appealing. Regarding focus, I took the advice of Dave G on this forum who suggested that 'focus, focus, focus' was the key to his success, so I took some time to try to get this right. Conditions were kind as well; good seeing and light breeze.

Cheers

Stu.

[markt]

Is this a PST mod you're using Stu?

[Carbon60]

Hi Mark,

Yes, this is a Vixen 80/PST hybrid, but with the BF5, using a machined adapter.

As you surmised, this particular image was taken using a barlow.

Regards

Stu

[Montana]

Tremendous pictures!

Alexandra