New to flatteners question...

[Leebert]

Hi all,

My new Skywatcher field flattener arrived this morning and I hope to use it this evening. I have one question that Google can't seem to answer which is what is the correct flange to sensor distance please or does it not matter?

This is the flattener: http://www.firstligh...-flattener.html

Many thanks,

Lee

[lensman57]

Hi all,

My new Skywatcher field flattener arrived this morning and I hope to use it this evening. I have one question that Google can't seem to answer which is what is the correct flange to sensor distance please or does it not matter?

This is the flattener: http://www.firstligh...-flattener.html

Many thanks,

Lee

55~56 mm give or take a mm or so. You need to set it up and experiment with the distance as the chip position is not always the same due to manufacturing variations. If you use a Canon DSLR with the correct T2 adapter it will be well within the specified range with the FF/FR, with CCD cameras it gets a little trickier.

A.G

A.G

[Leebert]

Thanks lensman57.

With the T ring adapter, the DSLR sensor was exactly 55mm away. Unfortunately, the little 66SD that I was trying it with doesn't have enough inward travel to come into focus with the flattener in the optical train. It wasn't a wasted night as it's always good practice to get out an image.

The result looks like I need more processing practice though!

Western Veil Nebula by MrLeebert, on Flickr

Cheers,

Lee

[lensman57]

Thanks lensman57.

With the T ring adapter, the DSLR sensor was exactly 55mm away. Unfortunately, the little 66SD that I was trying it with doesn't have enough inward travel to come into focus with the flattener in the optical train. It wasn't a wasted night as it's always good practice to get out an image.

The result looks like I need more processing practice though!

Western Veil Nebula by MrLeebert, on Flickr

Cheers,

Lee

Looks superb to me.

A.G

[ollypenrice]

Good result. It looks like you've done some global sharpening or deconvolution. Something has produced dark hard edges round the stars, anyway, and deconvolution is a devil for this. I'd avoid it, or exclude the stars from it. Focus is good, star colour is good. The weakest link is star shape.

Olly

http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/22435624_WLMPTM#!i=2277139556&k=FGgG233

[Leebert]

Thank you both.

I did do some sharpening on this one. I'm going to try again without over-cooking it. A friend has given me a couple of other ideas too which involve blending different layers of the same image to increase the contrast.

I really like the delicate structure of the nebulosity and I hope to add more data to it to improve the image.

Cheers

Lee