SGL 2023 Challenge 12 - 50mm "Nifty Fifty"

[MartinB]

Start date: 1st December 2023

End date: 29th February 2024

 

Super wide field mosaics are now very popular aided by some excellent software tools.  These images can show a vast areas of sky whilst zooming reveals increasing levels of detail.  However, there is a much simpler alternative which works well on typical computer screens or reasonalbe sized prints and that is the ubiquitous 50mm camera lens.  Not only is this a useable focal length but focal ratios are often under F2.  A quick browse has revealed a used Canon EF 50mm F1.8 STM lens in excellent condition on sale for £86.  

So the challenge is to show us what you can do imaging at 50mm.  This is a "sky challenge" so no landscape foreground.  50mm is the stipulation, nothing shorter or longer please.  Zoom lenses set at 50mm are eligable.

If you have any questions please feel free to PM me, this is much preferred to discussions within the thread.

RULES

All data must be captured and processed by you (no collaborative entries). 
Data must be captured during the challenge start & end dates.  Entries after the end date will not be included in the judging
Multiple entries are allowed.
Multiple submissions of the same image, processed differently, will not be accepted.

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To enter please post within this topic, do not start a new topic. Please post as much information as possible - when it was taken, how it was captured and processed, etc. The info won't necessarily be used for judging but will help fellow SGLers looking to learn and improve their knowledge and technique.

The thread is for image submissions only, please do not respond to entries other than by using emojies.  

[MartinB]

There has been some discussion about this challenge within the thread.  The comments were constructive but, as mentioned in the challenge introduction,  we like restrict posts to image entries only.  Any queries should be messaged to me.  I have added additional clarification below.

The only stipulation for this challenge is that you use a lens with a focal length of 50 mm.  Stacked exposures are fine but not mosaics.  Process as much as you see fit. We will be judging on the aesthetic merits of the images which may, of itself, not be based on technicalities or science.  Please feel free to detail issues such as chip and pixel size if you believe this will inform the judging process.  If you feel this is in any way ambiguous you are welcome to pm me for further clarification.  

[JeffV]

Orion shot over 2 nights Dec 14/15th Dec 23, Canon 60D + 50mm lens on a Skywatcher AZ-GTi with equatorial wedge.  60 x 180s total, ISO1600 stacked in DSS, processed in SIRIL and GIMP.  Very pleased to see that even with such a simple set up have Witch's Head, Horsehead, Flaming Star, Running Man, Barnard Loop and M42 of course.

[woldsman]

Unfortunately, due to atrocious weather I've had only one opportunity to image with a nifty fifty and was clouded out after only 60 minutes of integration time. Will try again if and when the forcast improves (surely sometime between now and the end of February?!). The lens is a vintage Olympus Zuiko OM f1.8, pre-owned and clear of fungus. It is stopped down to f4 (test shots indicated  this is the best aperture setting). There is a nice little lens cap that screws on to the Olympus which takes a dew heater band. As well as decent optics, I like the focus ring on the Zuiko. With an adapter, it is paired with a Canon EOS 100d (Baader modified) at ISO 400. The subs are 20 x 180" with 70 bias and 31 flats. I imaged with a side by side rig, enabling use of a guidescope and every 3rd capture is dithered. Date of capture was 19th December which was first quarter. Skies over my backyard are supposedly Bortle 4 but lamp posts  & outside lights are prevalent. As a 50mm's enormous FOV means that the sky gradient can be an issue, I used a narrowband LeNhance clip in filter. If I get a second go, I'll try filter-less if the next New Moon coincides with a clear sky (dreaming!). 

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by woldsman

[Red Chilli]

Ursa Minor

Canon 50mm 1.4 @f4, Canon 1100D, iOptron SkyGuider - 37x240sec ISO 800

 

 

 

[Graeme]

Here's my Hyades and Pleiades. I chose this target because initially, in my head after playing about in Stellarium, I could fit in the adjacent Uranus and comet 144P/Kushida, which altogether would have made an excellent image. Unfortunately, the reality of the field of view decided otherwise!

I used my 18mm-55mm Canon lens on the front of my ASI294MC Pro fixed onto the top of the 9.25mm SCT. Last night was the first time in ages we had a clear sky in the South East close to a new Moon. But with 20mph winds I decided to go for unguided 20 second exposures with the hope of capturing an adequate percentage of good frames. I set up in NINA and captured nearly 300 frames. After blinking through them in PixInsight to take out the drifting clouds I put 142 into WBPP. It's been so long that I've forgotten how to do this astrophotography thing because I forgot to take some Flat frames and took the dew shield off when I was done without thinking! I haven't got any 20 second Darks either so there's a faint hint of the 294 starburst at the top right. The lack of Flats left a very uneven vignetted background with what looked like a central blob of lens condensation. So I used Starnet2 to produce a clone star mask and starless image. I ramped up the contrast on the starless image with a Histogram Transformation and clone stamped out the M45 nebulosity, then used it as a mask on the starmask version to protect the stars and nebulosity while toning down the unwanted artifacts.   

A fun challenge!

 

Graeme

[AndrewRrrrrr]

Not many clear nights these days it seems!

This was taken on the 10th Jan. 47x 1 minute exposures at ISO 800 on modified Canon 60D plus 50mm lens with an Altair triband clip-in filter.

Camera was on a Vixen GP mount with an Onstep setup.

Processed in Astro Pixel Processor.

 

 

[Hawksmoor]

Two clear nights since I obtained my preloved Canon 1.4 -  50mm fixed lens. Used two Canon DSLRs one modded (with a Triband Filter) and one unmodded mounted on a Star Adventurer. 2 minute lights at ISO800. Just about an hours worth of exposures in total. Processed mainly using Affinity Photo2.  Just pleased to be able to capture some photons from our backyard.  I very much like the Constellation Auriga but always find it difficult to image successfully.

Edited January 13 by Hawksmoor
Typo

[woldsman]

 

Finally, after weeks of cloud, I managed to have another go - this time broadband.  Attempting the "nifty fifty" challenge, I've realised my backyard is not a very suitable location for widefield. There are too many buildings surrounding me and I couldn't find a target that wasn't affected by roof lines, which limited the total available imaging time. As before, the equipment is a vintage Olympus Zuiko OM f1.8 50mm @f4 paired with a Canon EOS 100d @iso 400. I fixed up a side-by-side mounting to benefit from guiding and dithering. Imaged Sunday 14th January (waxing crescent Moon, 12% illumination) from Latitude N 53 degrees 58 minutes: 88 x 60" lights with 31 flats and 70 bias frames. Processing-wise, the light gradient with a 50mm is tough! Too much background extraction and you lose detail. In the end, I traded off some light gradient to expose some of the Taurus dust lanes.  I've diffraction spikes and some lens flare due to needing to stop down to f4. These are caused by the aperture blades. If there is time, I'll try again experimenting with a DIY aperture disk. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 28 by woldsman

[Hawksmoor]

My best go at the constellation Orion with a modded Canon 200d DSLR and unmodded Canon 600d with clip in Triband filter and Canon 1.4 (shot at 1.6) fixed 50mm lens. Star Adventurer EQ mount.  Approximately +30 minutes of 2minute subs at ISO800. Taken before street lights went out so plenty of light pollution to tame. Primarily stacked and processed using AffinityPhoto 2. Very minor cropping. Other software involved; GraXpert, Starnet GUI, Images Plus 6.5 and AstroSharp and AstroClean.

 

[yuklop]

I really enjoyed this challenge and approached the challenge as setting myself the lofty ambition to mount a 50mm lens to my Atik Horizon Camera. I spent a few hours carefully crafting a mounting method out of the various adapters, found it wouldn't focus, so crafted another that seemed to focus far away in the day time. At night though, it turns out it wouldn't quite manage focus at infinity. So I had to very quickly hack it apart and use a glue gun to glue the lens to a M42 spacer ring. Then with some fiddling it worked. Oh, and it was held to a dovetail with electrical tape.

 

After the initial construction there wasn't a clear night in about 8 weeks in Southampton, but Thursday night was clear so I went and took a couple of pics. All I could manage was about an hour on M45, then an hour on both an Ha and OIII filter on NGC2244. There was a load of tilt, and other artifacts, but I had much fun with my fantastic contraption, and the results are below. Maybe we'll have another clear night in Feb, and if that is so I might make a better mounting solution that perhaps allows me to mount any old lens with any mounting as I have a few random old manual lenses. That'd be nice, and SGL, fantastic challenge, I'll look out for future ones - I don't usually image much, so it was quite inspirational! Thank you.

 

 

M45, 200 x 10sec subs. Full image had more artefacts than the British Museum, so a hefty crop happened.

40 x 1 min Ha subs + 60 x 1min OIII subs. Med Gain.

Edited January 20 by yuklop
added subframe details

[pipnina]

I decided to put my unmodified Nikon D810 and 50mm f1.8G lens to the test on 7th Jan for this challenge by focusing on the region between the Pleiades and Auriga. I collected to the tune of 2.5 hours of data in 30s exposures with the lens wide open @ 800iso, which was about the limit of exposure under my sky conditions. Tracked on star adventurer with USB battery & no guiding.

Unfortunately, strong gradients which I am still not good enough to correct, plus the lens' intense seagull stars at the edge of the frame forced me to crop the image heavily. To this end, I decided to narrow my focus to the California nebula and nearby dust clouds further down in Taurus.

Having made this decision I applied PixInsight SPCC, ABE, and then StarNet2 removal, and ran NoiseX on the starless image and BlurX on the star mask.

At this stage I was unhappy with the pale pink colour in the California and exported the starless image to a TIFF to edit in GIMP. I used LAB colour mode to remove the blue and increase the contrast in the red in the area of the nebula with the lasso select tool. I had to spend a lot of time doing trial and error here to ensure I avoided making red out of nowhere, and after a lot of flicking back and forth from edited to unedited images eventually found both a healthy (hopefully not TOO healthy) red for the nebula without inventing colour.

I then exported this reddened image back into PixInsight and experimented with star brightness before combining into a final image, then applied SCNR on green.

However I was still not satisfied as some horizontal banding was noticable, some odd 2nd or 3rd order gradient effects which I could not remove no matter how I changed my process, until I decided to take the final image, remove the stars from that again and run ABE. To my surprise by increasing the "function degree" to 9 the weird effects were detected. I don't know if the gradients have 100% been removed but I am able to look at the image without them staring at me now so I decided to use this as my final version for submission to the challenge!

This is the first time I've gotten a truly "good" (by my standards) image from an unmodified DSLR and camera lens. I think this may open me up to shooting more images in this form as this 10 year old cam and budget lens have exceeded expectations for me.

[nonlinear]

Seeing the current entries I feel my effort is not really worthy, but this is my first attempt at entering a challenge so I'll give it a go. Shot using an unmodified Nikon D7100 at f2.8, ISO 800. A stack of 55 x 15 sec exposures on a Move Shoot Move tracker. I used a 2" Optolong L-Pro filter blu-tacked to the front of the lens! Orion was low in the sky and Rigel was starting to set behind a palm tree at the end of the exposure. I am impressed that about 10 minutes of exposure will (just) bring out part of Barnard's Loop to the NW of the belt, the horsehead nebula, flame nebula, M78 and NGC2071 as well as M42. All processing was done with IRIS.  I have taken a central crop to remove the palm tree, and strong gradient. I prefer stacking short exposures to help avoid blowing out the centre of M42 too much.

 

Edited February 4 by nonlinear
Add reference to Barnard's Loop

[Gerr]

My Nifty Fifty image is produced by the Sigma 50mm lens and Canon 6D (astro modded).

Shot in La Palma beginning of January. About 1 hrs worth of data using star tracker. ISO1600  40secs f3.2.

The Orion Constellation and neighbouring nebulae;

[Roy Foreman]

I've wanted to do some wide angle imaging for years, so this 'Nifty Fifty' challenge was just the impetus I needed to get out there and do it.  I opted for Orion as my intended target as it contains lots of interesting objects, and is relatively bright.

Trouble is, I've only had two clear nights this winter and on neither occasion was Orion high enough out of the murk to produce a decent image.

With the closing date looming I just had to bite the bullet and shoot between the clouds, so the image below was the best I could manage.  Oh well.

 

Shooting data as follows :-

Date - 9th February 2024

Camera - Nikon D810a Full Frame Astro DSLR at ISO 3200

Lens - AFS Nikkor 50mm F/1.8 at F/2.8

Mount - Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI - unguided.

5 x 30s with ES Dark Sky filter

4 x 30s with no filter

Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop

Star spikes added to the main constellation stars using Star Spikes Pro.

 

Orion is not centred to avoid tree branches intruding into the image.

 

 

Edited February 14 by Roy Foreman
Date corrected !

[MartinB]

This challenge is now closed.  The results will be announced in about 2 weeks time

[MartinB]

The results are in - https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/420198-sgl-2023-challenge-12-50mm-nifty-fifty/