EOS 500D for christmas, my first moon!

[Matthew.Blake]

So, my wife and I got each other an EOS 500D for Christmas (not one each fool!) to photograph our first baby (due in March!). I thought I might as well use it for astrophotography in the meantime...

Here's my first (OK OK, not first but pretty close to once I'd figured out ISO settings and such and printed off a Bahtinov mask to help focus but I've only had the thing <24 hours!) attempt at the Moon.

[barkis]

Well, that's a satisfactory outcome, and better than my initial attempts. The moons a great target, and the camera, together with a scope, will produce some fine closeup shots.

Make sure you remember to post the baby pics too.

Ron.

[Deneb]

Nice Present, now the only thing left is you have to mod it !

[MishMich]

I'm very keen to hear how the 500D works out for planetary imaging - does the AV function record in MPEG or AVI? How does it pan out?

M

[Matthew.Blake]

Nice Present, now the only thing left is you have to mod it !

That's more than my life would be worth if I got caught! Our baby would look like a tomato in all the photos if I got the white balance wrong post mod.

[Matthew.Blake]

I'm very keen to hear how the 500D works out for planetary imaging - does the AV function record in MPEG or AVI? How does it pan out?

M

It may take a while for me to progress beyond the Moon and a star field I am trying at the moment to learn how to stack in Registax. Oh, and then there's the issue of getting my alignment right as I quite see Polaris through the polar scope from where my telescope is mounted.

[MishMich]

Still not managed polar alignment yet - lot of LP to the north, plus a big 3-storey victorian house, and ground too wet to be crawling around on to use polar scope (tried a ground sheet 2-3 weeks ago - which has yet to dry out.

I don't think alignment is such an issue with planets - you start recording, and can keep nudging it back into the viewfinder if it drifts out. If you use registax, you can set it to align to the object, and it will follow it around the frames.

I found a 2x barlow and the 5x zoom on the camera yielded a decent image of Jupiter through the laptop, and rough alignment allowed me to keep the image in view for 300-600 frames. Using a 5x barlow has proved more tricky, and I have captured 1500-2000 frames that way, nudging the object to keep in view 2-3 times. However, I've not yet managed any real resolution that way on the 8" Newt - better result with the 80mm ED refractor (but the size of Jupiter is not much bigger using the ED80 & 5x barlow than the SPX & 2x barlow). It may just be poor seeing when Jupiter is visible, as it has been very wet, cloudy and hazy here for about six weeks, with only a couple of clear nights (when I have been busy, of course...).

I nearly got the 500D, because of the video, but went for the cheaper option of a refurbished 1000D. So, I'm interested in knowing how the 500D works out on the video side. Using the 1000D via the laptop capture of the live-view stream, I end up with AVI resolutions a little better than a VGA webcam. I suspect that the 500D should produce a higher resultion, as I believe it shoots HD quality video. However, how that would translate using the 5x digital zoom I'm unclear.

M.

[MishMich]

P.S., I find registax great for planets and lunar shots, but I found it much easier to use Deep Sky Stacker for DSOs - because it aligns the frames by matching stars. This is helpful if you aren't polar aligned properly, and I found DSS can cope with a fair bit of rotation when using an Alt-Az mount. It even tried to stack images with 90 degree rotation (I forgot I'd swiveled the camera to get a better framing of M42 & the running man). I'd be interested in hearing how you get on using registax for star fields.

M.

[Matthew.Blake]

I'll have a look at DSS - right now I haven't even figured out how to get an output from Registax that doesn't have all the stars red! I'll have a go at recording video tonight. Thank goodness my brother bought me a 16GB SDHC card that can handle HD data rate!

[astropete]

good shot mathew, thanks for sharing.

[MishMich]

Have you tried the RGB Align function under wavelets, the post-processing part of registax?

Forgot to say - nice shot of moon, BTW.

[Matthew.Blake]

I tried adjusting the balance and alignment. I think the problem is two fold: horrible light pollution around here and me not having the first clue about the software. I know what I need to do, I even know in theory how I could do it. I have no idea how to get the software to do it though!

Anyone with Skype willing to share their desktop with me and show me the process is more than welcome!

[Takahashi]

So, I'm interested in knowing how the 500D works out on the video side. Using the 1000D via the laptop capture of the live-view stream, I end up with AVI resolutions a little better than a VGA webcam. I suspect that the 500D should produce a higher resultion, as I believe it shoots HD quality video. However, how that would translate using the 5x digital zoom I'm unclear.

I'll let you know as soon as the snow & festivities cease... It allows up to 1920 x 1080 and records in .MOV format, which makes hi-res clips very large in disk-space terms, but this could mean better quality for stacking, i.e. less compression. I am curious to see how "EOS Movie Recorder" works out with it though... Çàïèñü âèäåî çåðêàëüíûìè ôîòîàïïàðàòàìè

[MishMich]

These were shot with the EOS1000D in 5x zoom mode, using EOS Movie Recorder. But you don't seem to end up with that much higher resolution than a webcam that way. That's why I was interested in seeing how the EOS 500 works out in native mode. I'm not sure how much sensor resolution is an issue, though: the quality and size of the image that falls on the sensor you have seems more important.

Stargazers Lounge - MishMich's Album: imaging - Picture

Stargazers Lounge - MishMich's Album: imaging - Picture

Stargazers Lounge - MishMich's Album: imaging - Picture

Whatever way you choose, it takes up a lot of disk space - I've used up about 200GB on my new laptop in about three weeks.

I am trying to get a CCTV camera with HDD/DVD recorder working instead, and just using the EOS for DSOs (if these Dorset skies ever stay clear long enough).

M.