Widefield: Orion - Requesting Critique

[nashtok]

A few nights ago I went out to attempt some widefied astrophotography for the first time, and I was hoping I could get a quick critique on the results.  I like honest feedback, so don't be afraid to do so!

Here is the image data:

4 Exposures @ 15 sec. f/1.5 28mm

And the Image:

I used photoshop to stack the images, then adjusted the curves to give me a darker sky.  I then used a radial gradient with a soft light filter to help clear up some light pollution issues.

Thanks!

_N

[jambouk]

On my iphone screen it looks good. Well framed, and shows what it should show; i love the fact the Hyades are in the shot too, an under appreciated cluster in my opinion.

I'm not keen on the tree in the foreground, but not sure what can be done about that.

Is there some coma distortion at the edges? I would need to look on a bigger screen.

But in all, lovely. It would be good to draw on it the constellation outlines and then have the two images side by side to show your non-astro friends (on facebook or the like) what to look out for in the night sky.

So from my non-technical stand point, a lovely image. Thank you.

Jd

[NGC404]

Nice wide field image. Thanks for sharing 

[baggywrinkle]

There is some very nice detail there, what bexposures ans ISO did you use and the camera and lens?

There is a bit of glow in the right where did that come from? Maybe a shorter exposure would help or an LP filter.

Alwasy good to include a landscape feature as this provides scale.

[Robbo AR]

Really nice photo. Thanks for sharing it

[Ags]

Perhaps crop to remove the distracting tree, keeping Orion and the Hyades. This will also drastically reduce the residual LP issues.

[Eddy_]

Very nice image. There's some chromatic abberation/purple fringing around the brighter stars, try reducing your aperture next time. I had the same problem shooting at f1.8 recently, ended up using f2.8 which was much better.

[Astrosurf]

That's a lovely shot. Try reducing the exposure a little as there looks to be a tiny bit of star trailling. Poss movement when you took the photo - did you use a remote shutter release?

Also, to reduce nose, take a few more shots to stack and add a few darks.

It's a very good first try!

Alexxx

[toxic]

very nice image the only criticism about it is that i didnt take it  .

[frugal]

Ironically, you have managed to get so many stars in there that I had a hard time making out Orion which was the main thing you were trying to capture. 

I agree that the tree in the foreground adds some scale. It would be nice to find some way to reducing the "tree trailing", that has resulted from the stacking, but I am not sure how you would do that. mask out the tree in photoshop and then add it back from a single frame.

I also like the light coming in from the bottom right. It may well be light pollution, but it adds a counterpoint to the tree on the bottom left.

[toxic]

hope you dont mind nashtok i had a little play with your pic got rid of some of the gradient and corrected some of the star color in ps and astronomy tools plugins.

[nashtok]

Thanks for all the feedback!  I greatly appreciate it.

Here are some notes/response to some of the questions:

I used a Lumix LX7 camera (a so called enthusiast point and shoot) so there isn't a possibility of using an LP filter or using a cable release (I did set a timer so I wouldn't get vibration from pressing the shutter button).

The full exposure data is: 15 sec. f/1.5 28mm 800 iso

The LP is from a small town probably 10-15 miles away.  Where I live, we have pretty uniformly dark skies, but I have to travel quite a distance (~325 km) to get to truly dark skies

Is 15 seconds too long for 28mm?  I read that you can go with the 600/Focal Length for maximum exposure time.

How many more exposures would be ideal for cleaning up the image?

Again, thanks for all the critiques!  I love getting feedback on my work!

[nashtok]

Here is  a spread of my process

The left is the original image, next is after stacking, next is after level adjustment, and the last is the final image after correcting for light pollution.

Thanks Toxic!  How'd you remove the light pollution to the degree that you did?  Also, would there be a way to do so while keeping the Milky Way visible, at least partially?

_N

[toxic]

in ps open your picture then copy it then put both images side by side then goto the original and use the magie wand and set it to about 15 - 20 then select all the background then got to edit and copy  then click on your copy picture then goto edit and past then goto layer and merge down then goto filter and blur gaussian blur 30 percent then save it as what ever you want. now goto your original pic and got image then apply your copy to it, and select difference in blending about 80 to 100 opacity.

just play about with it it works wonders.but only do this after stacking as you will lose lots of data if you do it before stacking.

hope this helps

chris