What i got tonite

[Jonny99]

I know its not brilliant but here is something I took tonite

http://s53.photobucket.com/user/johnbook/media/Astrophoto/IMG_0454.jpg.html

Any help to get better would be appreciated

[Adamar98]

Hi James,

I've had a peek at a few of your images. You've got some good ones! Your last image has a bit of star trailing. I presume your images are all single exposures? If you give us a little more info on how you took these images (what camera, lens,iso setting,exposure times) I think you'll find more people will be able to give you advice on how to improve. I'm also presuming you are using a fixed tripod? With a setup like this you'll be limited to what you can achieve. Don't get me wrong you can still get some great images. Your image of Orion is good but if you took 20 images of Orion and stacked them then that image would look a lot better! You're certainly heading in the right direction. Get back to me with your setup info and I'll try my best to help you.

Cheers

Adam

[Jonny99]

Thanks Adam pleased im heading in the right direction

Camera i use is a Canon 1100d (unmodded) ISO is usually 800 altho last night I used 1600 , exposure time is usually between 30 and 45 secs , Lens is 18-55 altho ialso have the 55-250 lens not sure if this makes any difference to photos?

I use a fixed tripod (not a brilliant one but it seems to do the job) oh it was f5.6 I used last night .

Hope this is enough information

Jonathan

[wxsatuser]

Even with a decent rock steady tripod you can get vibration, keep very still if your near it.

Look for anything that will cause vibration, you may not see what causes it , it does'nt take much.

Even the mirror moving in the camera causes vibration that ruins images.

Use mirror lock up if you have it and use the self timer delay if your using the shutter button.

[Adamar98]

Morning Jonathan (I have no idea why i called you James?)

You equipment list is more or less exactly what I started out with.

With regards to your lenses, I would stick to using the 18-55 lens. Your 55-250 lens isn't going to be much use without some kind of tracking. When using your 18-55 lens you are limited to what exposure times you can use. If the lens is set at 18mm then you'll get exposure times of around 25 seconds. If its set at 55mm then your exposure time is shortened to around 10 seconds. Anything over these times and you'll get star trailing.

With regards to your iso settings, I tend to use iso 800. It's a good signal to noise ratio. But It's all down to what works for you. Experiment and see what looks best.

With regards to your tripod. If you do find its moving around a little then try attaching a heavy bag underneath the tripod head and let it dangle. This has worked for me in the past on windy nights.

One thing I would recommend you get is the canon rc-6 wireless remote control (£20 from Argos). That way you don't have to touch your camera to take images.

Once your setup up, start taking around 20 images (the more images the better) of your intended target then stack them using software like Deepskystacker. This software is free to download. 

Here is a link to a quick tutorial on how to use it 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nfUBkPfVxpE

You'll find your images look a lot better once stacked. Once you've done all of the above then your going to want to learn how to pull more data from your images with software like GIMP. Again this is free to download. I use photoshop but GIMP will do to start with. Learn how to use levels and curves and you'll see that your images start to have a lot more detail to them.

I'm sure a lot of what I've written above sounds very daunting but once you get your head around it you'll see it's all worth while.

One other suggestion I would make is to start posting in the 'getting started with imaging' part of the forum. You'll find a lot more people are in a similar situation to yourself. 

I hope all this help. Good luck and when the astrophotography bug bites prepare to start spending money!

Adam

[Jonny99]

Thanks Adam for this advice

Now just waiting for more clear skies , one thing I want to know about when using gimp is the levels and curves , how do you use them ?

May get out tonite but its debatable a few clouds on the horizon here

[Adamar98]

No probs matey!

Here's a link to a quick tutorial on levels and curves in photoshop. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WnPII6YdVBc

I'm sure you can get photoshop cs2 for free now? Maybe something for you to look into.

What you see is exactly the same as what you do in gimp. It's just finding the tabs that contain levels and curves.

When your image comes out of Deepskystacker it will be very dark. You use levels and curves to tease the image out.

Have a play around with it. I'm sure you'll go over the same image time and time again. I know I did when I first started.

It's very satisfying to look and think 'I did that'.

Hope this helps.

Adam

[PeteC]

Hi Jonathan

Adam's advice is spot on, that's pretty much how I do it as well with the same camera and lenses. Photoshop CS2 is free to download too - I downloaded it a few weeks ago. Just google it then google 'photoshop cs2 code generator' which you need to activate it. Like Adam says, stack as many frames as you can - signal to noise ratio goes up by the square root of how many you stack - stack four = twice as good, stack nine = three times as good ..... stack 100 = 10 times as good!

Good luck!

Pete

[Jonny99]

No probs matey!

Here's a link to a quick tutorial on levels and curves in photoshop. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WnPII6YdVBc

I'm sure you can get photoshop cs2 for free now? Maybe something for you to look into.

What you see is exactly the same as what you do in gimp. It's just finding the tabs that contain levels and curves.

When your image comes out of Deepskystacker it will be very dark. You use levels and curves to tease the image out.

Have a play around with it. I'm sure you'll go over the same image time and time again. I know I did when I first started.

It's very satisfying to look and think 'I did that'.

Hope this helps.

Adam

Cheers Adam will download that today as cant get out to work because of the lousy weather

Thanks Pete think im gonna need all the luck in the world hehe

One more question does deepskystacker really take all night to do one photo ? Trying to explain to my wife why I need to leave the laptop on all night

[Adamar98]

It shouldn't take all night? How many images are you stacking?

When I stack around 30 images including darks and flats, it can take around 40mins.

How are you saving your images on the camera? Are you saving them as jpegs or raw?

You want to be saving them as raw. You'll find the option on your camera under menu and quality I think.

It maybe that your trying to stack jpegs?

[Jonny99]

Sorry just thought that's what it was because the guy on the tutorial had said it took him all night to do

If its only gonna take 40 minutes that fine maybe less just got a new 4gb laptop with 500gb hard drive with I3 core

[Adamar98]

I presume your not using calabration frames yet so it shouldn't take long at all.

I hope your going to post your stacked image for us to have a look at?

If you struggle processing your image you can always post your Tiff file (these are the files Deepskystacker produce) on here and ask other users to have a go for you. There are some very clever people on here.

[Jonny99]

Yes will post when its sorted

[PeteC]

How long DSS takes depends on amongst other things how many frames it is stacking, whether you are using calibration frames, and maybe most crucially the performance of your PC. I've just replaced my 5 year old laptop with a new pretty high spec one, and what used to take 2 or 3 hours the new laptop powers through in 10 min. Not to worry if you've got an old PC, just get used to the idea of firing up DSS before you go to bed and it'll all be done for you in the morning!

Pete