Learning curve imaging milestone moments?

[northcanadian]

Hi all:

I was wondering (since there are so many learning curves in imaging) what other SGL members remember as milestone moments in their learning journey that stand out?  I know there are many but those special personal  'Eureka' or 'Galileo' moments that stand out and have benefitted imagers the most is what I am curious to know(?)

Thanks again

Cheers 

Roger

[RikM]

The three biggest milestones on my imaging journey have been a talk on image processing at SGL5, autoguiding, and moving from DSLR to a mono CCD and filters.

[Luke]

I do mainly solar and lunar imaging. Three personal milestones I think are:

1. Stacking multiple images. I was thrown at first because when I tried stacking the result seemed blurry. The penny eventually dropped that yes the stacked image will be more blurry than your sharpest single frame, BUT it will have far less noise, so you can sharpen it much more than you can the sharpest single frame, to end up with a sharper/more detailed image.
2. Using Smart Sharpen (Remove set to Lens Blur) in Photoshop to sharpen instead of wavelets in Registax (or these days, I sometimes use Lucy Richardson deconvolution in Astra Image). Some people do amazing things with wavelets but I just never could get on with them, my wife gets on far better with them than I do.
3. Really, just playing around in Photoshop. I have been lucky to meet some very talented digital artists and one thing I noticed about some of the very best is that they like pushing buttons. What does this do? What does that do? They play around, figure out how something works, even use a feature in a different way than what it is supposedly meant for. So I try to have a play every now and then. Sometimes you discover little nuggets that way.

[Scott]

For me, I guess the first is not so much a learning curve as a realisation. it was my first ever attempt, capturing and stacking a handful of 10sec subs and falling for ap.

Then it was coming to grips with calibration frames

Thirdly was guiding. wow, what a huge difference

finaly (until next step) its buying a mono ccd+filters. This is a new thing for me so it's an ongoing learning curve. 

I'm guessing the next step will be either powered filter wheels or auto focusing....or something else

It's been a rough ride at times but absolutely enthralling   

Edit:- I just realised I haven't squeezed photo shop in there.... Thats definately the hardest and longest, on going curve and I'm so far from calling myself adequate it's not funny

[MattJenko]

I think there will be a common theme here. Mine are in the order in which I hit them, not in importance as they are tricky to compare that way.

- Finding SGL

- Getting guiding working.

- First M42 with DSLR.

- PixInsight. Once the penny dropped with this, I haven't looked back.

- Mono CCD + filters. A whole new world.

Matt

[nightster]

In the past 12 months my major lightbulb moments are:

1. Basic understanding how the hardware and software interact.

2. Guiding and how it interacts with PHD, and the capture software.

3. Calibration frames, their necessity, how to aquire and use them.

4. How frustrating noise can be.

5. How much money I need to save each month for the next purchase.

[JayStar]

Mine Eureka moment was learning how to use TPoint and automated plate solving together (well not really earning as such, more finding out that it can be done, what it actually means and what it does, then doing it once!)

Astounded that the technology even exists to be honest at the amateur price point. There have been several other moments of course, like realising that you had to actually take the lens cap off to see anything

[carastro]

My stepping stones are:

Discovering the Bahtinov mask

Getting guiding working

Modifying my DSLR

Getting flats right

Getting a Mono CCD camera and adding Ha to some of my DSLR images

Finally working out how to register the various filters into a combined colour image

Getting an electronic filterwheel & learning to use the sequencer so that a whole set of filters can be done without my intervention

Carole 

[nightster]

My stepping stones are:

Finally working out how to register the various filters into a combined colour image

Carole 

This line item currently has me befuddled. 

[Alien 13]

The single most important milestone for me was realising how easy AP can be if you let it, I was put off by the potential vast expense the need for guiding and having to use software/hardware tools to find and focus a target before even getting close to pressing the shutter.

In reality just by getting a DSLR and realising that the live view image was your best friend I could plonk down the tripod point the camera anywhere that took my fancy and take a few multiple exposures and be amased at what appeared on the preview screen.

Alan

[carastro]

Finally working out how to register the various filters into a combined colour image

Carole 

 

This line item currently has me befuddled. 

My answer to this was Registar.  It's brilliant and despite the cost  - something like £120 I think it was, it's worth every penny.

You can add images done with different scopes and cameras, images that are binned and not binned and provided they are not flipped in relation to each other, it will line them all up, even if there is a slight discrepancy across the FOV.  

i.e. I had a horsehead Nebula done with my DSLR but when I tried to add Ha to the image (done with different cameras of course), the stars would line up one one side of the image but there would be a slight misaligned on the opposite end of the image, which I put down to the effect of flatteners.  When I used Registar it stretched the image where necessary (only a miniscule amount) so that the stars lined up across the entire image.

Also you can ask Registar to crop the images, so that you don't even have to slide the registered images around until the stars fit over the ones underneath.

It's brilliant.

Once you have the different filter images lined up, you paste the colours into the appropriate channels.  Adding Ha needs deeper explanation.  

HTH

Carole 

[RikM]

I'm also a big fan of Registar.