should I just give up?

[greenkat]

Ok, before I go take some headache tablets, i'm going to ask for help

This was taken with an olympus e500 dslr, set at 398mm, 10x40sec exposures, I've tried enhancing with photoshop, deepsky stacker, registax ect ect ect , but cant seem to get any detail out of it.

what do i need to do to get a decent image . Are there any light pollution filters for camera lenses?

Also, I have the chance of getting a nikon D50 on the cheap, would it be better than my Olympus E500?

Any advice appreciated, even if its not to give up the day job :?

[greenkat]

ooops, sorry about the image size :oops:

[jgs001]

I'm no expert, but whatever happens don't give up. Keep trying. MartinB has written a really good tutorial, it's in imaging topics I think. Worth trying that. Don't push anything hard, make multiple small steps instead of one large one. That's where I've been going wrong. It looks like you have a bit of tracking error or something that's causing little glitches. I'm sure someone with more experience than I will be along shortly to give some more useful suggestions.

[Psychobilly]

Hi Greenkat.

Don't despair...

What was the ISO speed that the images were taken at? 40s isn't that long an exposure but at a high ISO speed will start to show up more detail in the "deep sky".

The ISO speed and Exposure steeings wil (without filtering) be limited by you LP levels its soemthing that you will have to experiment with.

The D50 would give you more control over your imaging.

Billy....

[greenkat]

Hi and thanks for replying

The iso was at 800 if i remember rightly, and yep, I do have quite a bit of light pollution

How would the D50 give me more control ?

I control my E500 on my laptop when photographing the sky, although admittedly have been saving files as jpeg just for ease of use, though the E500 will shoot in raw.

Would a neodydium filter help ?

I have tried all the adjusting levels & curves on this image but it just ends up looking terrible .

I shall keep trying though

[russ]

Would a neodydium filter help ?

yes it would. The Neodydium works well with exposures under 3 mins.

How would the D50 give me more control ?

The D50 produces far cleaner images compared to the E500. The Olympus 4/3 chip is renowned for it's poor high ISO performance. The Nikon controls it far better. It would give you more options with the final image, do more with it.

Don't forget to capture and stack as many images as you can. That will help no end.

M31 is a very tricky customer to get right even when you know what you are doing. It's hard to pick up the outer regions without overexposing the core. There is M42 and M45 coming round which are excellent targets for starting out.

Had a quick play with the image. Couldn't bring out anything in M31 sadly but my skills aren't up to much.

Regards

Russ

[greenkat]

Cheers Russ ,

I think I might give the D50 a try next time and shall seek out a neodydium filter

[russ]

A couple of things of note with the D50 (the camera i use btw). It has no wired remote port, so you can't use a cable from the laptop to control it. It was the single most disappointing aspect of the camera for me.

The second thing being the lack of backlight on the LCD, making things very tricky at night trying to adjust settings.

Thirdly, while it easily out performs the Olympus, it can't match a Canon for low noise. You'll be better served with a 300D which has none of the above failings. If on the otherhand, like me, the D50 is offered (i got it for free, mine is a 'rent a wreck') at a silly price, then it's not a bad camera to have.

Russ