Lunar Snaps with Celeston NexYZ and Smartphone

[paulastro]

I bought a NexYZ from Astrofest as I like to have a quick record of particularly interesting lunations (to me anyway!) as a record and future reference to support my visual observations.  Though I could use my Olympus mirrorless camera and connect it directly to one of my refractors, it's much quicker to take an afocal image through the eyepiece, it saves valuable visual observing time!  Granted, the quality would be better using the Olympus, but I only need reference shots.   Though I appreciate nice astro photos visual observing is my thing, and any astro images I take have to be time economical or I won't bother. 

The notes below are an email I sent to some friends after being up early this morning for the Moon and planets in the pre-dawn sky.  The phone used was a Galaxy A3 (2016) if anyone is interested.

 

More experiments using the NexYZ smartphone adapter to take snaps of the Moon using the phones camera.  Astro Tech 102ED refractor, Morpheus 17.5 mm eyepiece, X2 Celestron Ultima barlow.  The seeing was again poor, but better than the morning before.  Results should be better when the seeing is good - and I have practiced a bit more!

 

The biggest challenge is using a smartphone camera which doesn’t  have full manual control.  Though I can make some adjustments, I can’t select a shutter speed, can’t set the exposure exactly as I want.  I have to try and ‘fool’ the camera by positioning the Moon in different parts of the pic to reduce or increase the final exposure.  Of course I can do a little processing afterwards, but it isn’t ideal.  Also the zoom on mine is digital, so if you use it, it degrades the image to some degree.  If someone has a smartphone camera with total manual control and an optical zoom they will find it a lot easier and get better pics.

 

The other important thing is to find an eyepiece that’s best suited, the Morpheus with the Ultima barlow has worked best for me so far, though I haven’t a lot of choice.

 

Anyway, still good fun ( as long as I leave ample time for visual observing! ) and MUCH better than trying to just hold the phone to the telescope eyepiece.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

[laudropb]

I have just bought one of these adapters. I hope my efforts are as good as yours.

[Astro Imp]

Excellent results Paul, well done.

[Stu]

Very nice results Paul. Which phone do you have, there are various apps you can use to give better control of exposure and shutter speed.

[laudropb]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Very nice results Paul. Which phone do you have, there are various apps you can use to give better control of exposure and shutter speed.

What apps would you recommend for an android phone Stu ?

[paulastro]

8 hours ago, laudropb said:

I have just bought one of these adapters. I hope my efforts are as good as yours.

I'm sure you will be able to get some good results at least as good.  The pic below was taken on Feb 14th using my other refractor, a SW 72ED.

[paulastro]

2 hours ago, Astro Imp said:

Excellent results Paul, well done.

Many thanks Alan, that's very kind of you.

[paulastro]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Very nice results Paul. Which phone do you have, there are various apps you can use to give better control of exposure and shutter speed.

Many thanks  Stu, that's very nice of you.  I'm not very phone/app savvy, what apps would you suggest?  I didn't know there were such apps .

[paulastro]

Sorry Stu, my phone is a Samsung Galaxy A3 (2016), forgot to put  this in my last post.

[Stu]

34 minutes ago, paulastro said:

Sorry Stu, my phone is a Samsung Galaxy A3 (2016), forgot to put  this in my last post.

Thanks Paul. I'm not sure how much control is possible with the older phones. There is a pro mode on Samsung phones which gives more advanced features and on the S9 which  I have it does give full control of shutter, ISO and two settings of f stop. Give this a try on yours.

The two apps which are also recommended are ProCam 2018 and NightCap. Procam is the one I tend to favour but many like NightCap for linger exposure shots. Again, they may give varying levels of control with older phones so you will just have to try them out to see what they do. I would thoroughly recommend upgrading your phone as the latest Samsung and Huawei phones have superb cameras on them, much more sensitive and much lower noise.

For processing I use Snapseed and PS Express. Snapseed gives excellent control of levels, and PS Express has good noise reduction. Both well worth a try and can make a dramatic difference to images. Snapseed can be excellent for reducing sky background brightness and bringing out contrast.

Hope that helps a little. Have a look in the Smartphone section here on SGL, there are plenty of examples and some good advice too.

[paulastro]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Thanks Paul. I'm not sure how much control is possible with the older phones. There is a pro mode on Samsung phones which gives more advanced features and on the S9 which  I have it does give full control of shutter, ISO and two settings of f stop. Give this a try on yours.

The two apps which are also recommended are ProCam 2018 and NightCap. Procam is the one I tend to favour but many like NightCap for linger exposure shots. Again, they may give varying levels of control with older phones so you will just have to try them out to see what they do. I would thoroughly recommend upgrading your phone as the latest Samsung and Huawei phones have superb cameras on them, much more sensitive and much lower noise.

For processing I use Snapseed and PS Express. Snapseed gives excellent control of levels, and PS Express has good noise reduction. Both well worth a try and can make a dramatic difference to images. Snapseed can be excellent for reducing sky background brightness and bringing out contrast.

Hope that helps a little. Have a look in the Smartphone section here on SGL, there are plenty of examples and some good advice too.

Many thanks for your response, you've given me some very useful information.  There is a pro mode on my A3, which has a sliding exposure control (from -2 to +2),  ISO settings (auto, 100, 200, 400 and 800) and a WB control with auto and other settings.  That's it.   I guess this is rather sparse compared with a more modern phone such as your S9. There was a review of smart phones for photography in the Jan 19th edition of Amateur Photography.   Out of eight phones compared, two ( Huawei P20 Pro and Huawei Mate 20 Pro) received the mags gold award  - if I had the dosh I would love to upgrade to one of these.

I've made notes re your excellent app suggestions, and will give them a go with my phone, they may be of some use with my antique camera until I can upgrade my phone

I use an old edition of Elements for my usual photo processing, but will look at the ones you suggest.  Not sure if I will be using my phone camera with anything but the moon, but will look into it.  Though I haven't a driven mount (no intentions of buying one ) we do have driven mounts up at The Astronomy Centre which I could use if I want to branch out   I will also certainly be browsing the Smartphone section on SGL (I hadn't noticed there was one!).  

Many thanks again Stu, that's been most helpful.

[Pete Presland]

Superb Paul, modern camera phones are amazing!

[paulastro]

Thanks Pete, I agree with you, quite amazing, and mine has a rather antiquated camera compared with current offerings - and it's only three years old.  It makes you wonder how good they will be in three more years .

[Stu]

Glad it was useful Paul.

The key point with the moon seems to be keeping the exposure down so you don't blow out any of the brighter parts. Doing this loses the detail which cant be got back during processing.

Some gentle sharpening and other processing can really help bring out detail. That said, your images are very good as they are!