Round 2

[Paul2019]

So heres my second attempt done tonight, typically I haven't had a clear night since my last attempt and the one we do get is after a 12 hour shift but needs must and all that. Its a widefield constellation shot of Hercules also in the frame is Lyra and Corona Borealis, but if you squint really hard and zoom in you can kind of make out where M13 and M92 are as very small fuzzies.  My first load of subs were out of focus and deep sky stacker wouldn't have them and I got a few more and then the clouds rolled in limiting me to just 7 usable subs. Taken with my canon 400d 18mm lens.

7 x 20s subs @ ISO 800, processed in photoshop. Its definitely an improvement on my first attempt but I'm still not that happy with it but until I get a scope and mount all I can do is widefield stuff. I am seriously considering the 130p-ds with Eq3-pro from first light optics but I'm still very torn between this and an ed72. I do want to use it visually occasionally and having previously had a 90mm Achro Frac I know what to expect here with that but sense is telling me the reflector would be best but I really love fracs.  I've been waiting for M31 but unfortunately at this time of year its too low for me to image from home as there happens to be a street light right in the way.

There truly are some amazing images on this forum and some very talented induvials, I know what I have so far are no where near the same level but someday I hope to be taking amazing images too. Please share your criticisms and thoughts on how I can improve it is very much appreciated as without it I wouldn't have the foggiest on how to improve. 

[Anthony1979]

Im trying a bit of widefield but dont seen to get it right.... Theres good pics

[Demonperformer]

3 hours ago, Paul2019 said:

I know what I have so far are no where near the same level

And you haven't been doing it for nearly as long! It is good to learn from others, but never compare yourself to them. If you do, you run the risk of simply trying to take their pictures, which will leave you feeling empty. The question should be, what do you think of the result? Does it show what you set out to capture? For what it is worth, I think it is a good representation of the area. There are so many DSO gems in the area that it is easy to forget widefield. After seeing this one, I would like to see what you would achieve with Cygnus with the clouds of milky way stars flowing through it.

What f-stop were you using? I know the temptation I always had with camera lenses was to open them fully to get as much light as possible, but even the "nifty fifty" benefits from being closed down slightly.

For AP, this is a good book. It does not say much about widefield, but the principles it lays down and processing advice are as valid there as with tiny subjects. My personal opinion is that, for imaging, the ed72 would be a lot easier that the 130, but by the time you factor in the flattener (for imaging) and diagonal (for visual) it will be quite a bit more expensive, so don't let me  spend your money!

[alan potts]

Keep at it, there are some wonderful people on here that are full of helpful advice and even though I didn't full understand some of their answers, they were happy to put nit into village idiot terms for me. The only thing I would say is I can't see M13 on there at 20seconds which surprises me. I can see that without optics from my garden on good nights, though it is a fair bit higher here.

Alan.

[wxsatuser]

33 minutes ago, alan potts said:

Keep at it, there are some wonderful people on here that are full of helpful advice and even though I didn't full understand some of their answers, they were happy to put nit into village idiot terms for me. The only thing I would say is I can't see M13 on there at 20seconds which surprises me. I can see that without optics from my garden on good nights, though it is a fair bit higher here.

Alan.

It's there, if the OP does'nt mind I cropped out the bit to show it, stretched a little as well.

[Paul2019]

3 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

And you haven't been doing it for nearly as long! It is good to learn from others, but never compare yourself to them. If you do, you run the risk of simply trying to take their pictures, which will leave you feeling empty. The question should be, what do you think of the result? Does it show what you set out to capture? For what it is worth, I think it is a good representation of the area. There are so many DSO gems in the area that it is easy to forget widefield. After seeing this one, I would like to see what you would achieve with Cygnus with the clouds of milky way stars flowing through it.

What f-stop were you using? I know the temptation I always had with camera lenses was to open them fully to get as much light as possible, but even the "nifty fifty" benefits from being closed down slightly.

For AP, this is a good book. It does not say much about widefield, but the principles it lays down and processing advice are as valid there as with tiny subjects. My personal opinion is that, for imaging, the ed72 would be a lot easier that the 130, but by the time you factor in the flattener (for imaging) and diagonal (for visual) it will be quite a bit more expensive, so don't let me  spend your money!

I'm unsure on the f-stop, but I'm happy with it to a degree but its clear the 20s subs are too long as theres some clear trailing on the image. Its by no means perfect and I do have a bit of a habit of being my own worst critic, so I doubt I will ever be 100% happy. Cygnus will definitely be my next target as I would also be keen to see what is achievable there. I am very sure the Frac is what I want however.

1 hour ago, alan potts said:

Keep at it, there are some wonderful people on here that are full of helpful advice and even though I didn't full understand some of their answers, they were happy to put nit into village idiot terms for me. The only thing I would say is I can't see M13 on there at 20seconds which surprises me. I can see that without optics from my garden on good nights, though it is a fair bit higher here.

Alan.

Its definitely there but its not exactly anything special, I am hoping to improve with practise but I really want to get the hang of widefield and using the DSLR before I add more kit into the equation.

47 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

It's there, if the OP does'nt mind I cropped out the bit to show it, stretched a little as well.

Thanks for this, I would of done it otherwise. Its actually not that bad when you have stretched it. Out of curiosity what did you do to keep it looking this good? Also this image is a compressed PNG so I am even more impressed with it. 

 

Thanks for all your replies and responses. I will aim for Cygnus as my next target to see how that goes, hopefully I will produce something worth entering into the competition before it closes. Heres to cloud free nights,

 

Paul

Edited June 16, 2019 by Paul2019

[ollypenrice]

I think you're going well.

My advice concerns the background sky in which I think two adjustments are needed.

1) It is somewhat green. In Photoshop just choose the Colour Sampler tool in the Eyedropper menu and set the sampler to 3x3 or 5x5 average. Place 4 sample points a little in from each corner and read the RGB values in the Info section. Personally I like to have each colour at the same value, something like 23/23/23. I think you'll find green is quite high. There are various ways to adjust this. Colour balance set to shadows would do it, as would bringing in the black point in the green channel. The sampled values will also lead us to the second adjustment...

2) Slight gradient. The sky is a little brighter in the lower left hand quadrant.  I deal with gradients using Pixinsight and don't do it in Ps, though it can be done. Perhaps someone could advise? There is a reasonably priced Ps plugin called Gradient Xterminator which will do it, and there's Hasta La Vista green for free/donation on the Deep Sky Colors website. This isn't strictly a gradient tool, it removes unwanted green which is often a problem in DS imaging for some reason. A crude way to attack the gradient would be to use the burn tool set to shadows at about 2% using a huge fully feathered eraser but this would be a bodge!

Talking of bodges, you can round up those stars as well: rotate the image till the elongation is horizontal on the screen. Make a copy layer. Set the blend mode from normal to darken in Layers. Go to Filters-Other-Offset and offset one layer horizontally by a small amount till the stars look round. You may find the smallest you can do is a bit too much but that's fine. Apply and then go to Edit-Fade and fade the offset till your stars look good. Flatten and re-rotate the image back to how it was.

Olly

Edited June 16, 2019 by ollypenrice

[Paul2019]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I think you're going well.

My advice concerns the background sky in which I think two adjustments are needed.

1) It is somewhat green. In Photoshop just choose the Colour Sampler tool in the Eyedropper menu and set the sampler to 3x3 or 5x5 average. Place 4 sample points a little in from each and read the RGB values in the Info section. Personally I like to have each colour at the same value, something like 23/23/23. I think you'll find green is quite high. There are various ways to adjust this. Colour balance set to shadows would do it, as would bringing in the black point in the green channel. The sampled values will also lead us to the second adjustment...

2) Slight gradient. The sky is a little brighter in the lower left hand quadrant.  I deal with gradients using Pixinsight and don't do it in Ps, though it can be done. Perhaps someone could advise? There is a reasonably priced Ps plugin called Gradient Xterminator which will do it, and there's Hasta La Vista green for free/donation on the Deep Sky Colors website. This isn't strictly a gradient tool, it removes unwanted green which is often a problem in DS imaging for some reason. A crude way to attack the gradient would be to use the burn tool set to shadows at about 2% using a huge fully feathered eraser but this would be a bodge!

Talking of bodges, you can round up those stars as well: rotate the image till the elongation is horizontal on the screen. Make a copy layer. Set the blend mode from normal to darken in Layers. Go to Filters-Other-Offset and offset one layer horizontally by a small amount till the stars look round. You may find the smallest you can do is a bit too much but that's fine. Apply and then go to Edit-Fade and fade the offset till your stars look good. Flatten and re-rotate the image back to how it was.

Olly

Hi Olly,

Thank you so much for this, it was really helpful and made me figure some stuff out I didnt quite understand already. I am confident that the gradient in the image is caused by moonlight as it was fairly close at the time of shooting, but GradientXterminator really fixed that well.I am hopelessly colour blind which makes editing images tricky at the best of times, however using the point sampler and comparing the colour values made this far far easier. I tried your trick to reduce the bloated stars but it removed a lot of the data from the image so I decided that I was happy with the result even though they are slightly bloated. I am now very happy with this image after going through your advice and considering this is my second attempt I am definitely a happy bunny. I know I still have lots to learn and I am definitely adamant that I first need to be consistently producing good wide field images before I add more things into the equation like tracking mounts and scopes as I am sure this will only complicate things further plus I think I need to start considering adding flats and darks to my stacks which may improve them further as well. Anyways heres the new image

 

Again thanks so much for all the input you guys have had so far its really made things easier for me to understand and spurs me onto the next one.

Paul

 

Edited June 16, 2019 by Paul2019

[Anthony1979]

this was my attempt

[Paul2019]

1 hour ago, Anthony1979 said:

this was my attempt

I hope you dont mind but I have processed it a tad further for you and ran it through astrometry to see what you shot, 

Heres the results using the same technique as my Hercules image

The picture shows part of Lyra with the brightest star being Vega and the rest goes into Cygnus. I am very interested to hear how many subs, exposure times etc. It looks great!

 

Paul

[des anderson]

A great start, good images well done. Des

[tomato]

That’s a great ‘static’ widefield shot, way better than any I took when I first started out. M31 will show up in your widefield shot, be patient, it will be much better placed when Sept/Oct roll around.👍

[Paul2019]

32 minutes ago, des anderson said:

A great start, good images well done. Des

Thanks, I just wish it would stop raining for a few days.

12 minutes ago, tomato said:

That’s a great ‘static’ widefield shot, way better than any I took when I first started out. M31 will show up in your widefield shot, be patient, it will be much better placed when Sept/Oct roll around.👍

Thanks for your comments, I cant wait until the winter for the earlier nights and better imaging prospects with Pleiades, Orion and M31 being far better positioned for me. I live under bortle 3/4 depending on where in the garden I am so I am very hopeful for a productive winter. Im ust trying to get my basics with the camera and tripod before making it more complex.

[Anthony1979]

That was just a single shot with my nikon d3500  cant remember the selling i well looked later

[Anthony1979]

Settings i meant sorry 

[wxsatuser]

Here is a single 8second exposure from my back yard, looking east but dominated by a strawberry tree. 😀

This taken with a Canon 6D and a 16-35 L lens set at 16mm f/4.5 ISO 3200, we still had sodium street lights back then. ☹️

Auriga just rising next to tree, M45 to right, Perseus top centre Taurus below M45

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by wxsatuser

[ollypenrice]

I wouldn't agonize for too long over where gradients come from because I suspect that nobody knows! I live at a dark site where the SQM sometimes reaches 22 and we still get them here, certainly in RGB, becuase the eye is ultra-ssensitive to slight drifts in colour. They may even be inherent to the camera. I had an OSC CCD which tended to be too red on one side of a diagonal line corner to corner and too green on the other side.

Olly

[Anthony1979]

My images was take with my nikon d3500 with kit lens at 55mm, f/5.6, single 5 sec, iso 6400.... I have 9 images