T 2 RING

[j.finn]

Hi I have just mounted T2 ring on my new canon 450d and have attached it on my skymax scope shes set up and ready to go. I don’t know if it will work this is all new to me and am praying for the best . apparently there’s clear skies tonight and hopefully I get my first pic. Wish me luck.

J.Finn

Clear skies

[Merlin66]

Have you "practised" with the focus on a distant object yet?

You can control exposures via the camera's UBB connection and the Canon Utilities....

What about a remote shutter release? The TC-80n is a favourite. Without it you may end up with major vibration problems.

Wishing you the best for later tonight!!!

[jgs001]

For your first go, you've got an easy target to find.. Go for the moon.

For focus, use liveview (see below), however, set the camera on manual, and you'll need to set the shutter speed to something like 1/10s or even slower to get the liveview display to show what you want to see (you may have to experiment a little). You do not want to use this shutter speed for the shot though as that will burn out the moon. For the actual shot, you're probably going to be in the order of about 1/50 to 1/80 (that's based on using my Skymax 102 and my C80ED with a 2xTC, about f12 to f15). Set the ISO to 100.

Use the liveview, focus as best as you can. Then zoom in a level and repeat. Then zoom in all the way (10x) and spend quite some time getting it as good as you can. Set the camera to 10 second self timer, and enable mirror lock up (that should remove any vibration issues).

Sit back, snap a fair few frames, and pick the best (5 to 10 should do). You may find that you need to tweak the shutter speed between frames to reduce or increase the exposure a little. Don't rely on what it looks like, look at the histogram (press the display button in preview mode till the histogram appears). Try to avoid large amounts of the graph hard against the right hand side. You'll also get blinking areas in the preview if you do, this indicates probable data loss due to over exposure (although if you're shooting raw, you may... if it's not too over exposed, be able to pull some back).

HTH

[j.finn]

Thanks for the advice guys........

I have a lot to learn.......went out last night very cold I don’t have a dew shield. The scope lasted about 45 minutes before the lens was no good to work with. I focused on the moon played about with some setting on the 450 took about 25 shots which crashed my laptop when I loaded them on might be the raw files am not sure. I moved over to Jupiter which I could see on the camera so zoomed in on x 10 on the canon but couldn’t get a shot I need a remote shutter release I think. The vibrations were too much when I clicked the camera by this time the lens was cold and almost wet and the cloud came over fast, time to call it a night.

My first shot

[jgs001]

that's come out nicely... Did you shoot in raw ? And what processing have you done on it ?

[j.finn]

Yes it’s in raw . I down loaded a free program on the net "irfan view" that supports raw files.

I don’t have the disc software for the camera canon 450.Am just learning the functions of the 450 now shutter speed, iso etc. I have no experience with cameras or telescopes yet just a few weeks.

This is just a straight photo.

hopefully the first of many.

[jgs001]

Gotcha. raw always needs some processing... as there is no sharpening, contrast or other adjustments done in camera. I had a quick play with your jpg (hope you don't mind, if you do, let me know and I'll remove it) just to show you what I mean...

I boosted contrast with curves, and a bit of a sharpen (using a highpass filter) in gimp

[j.finn]

Yes this far looks better already cheers JOHN.

[j.finn]

I will try again this evening having a go at the moon. With a little bit more knowledge about my camera and the settings of the camera. Am hoping for a better shot of the moon. I have made a dew shield out of cardboard so I can stay out longer then last night’s 45 mins