Well, you gotta start somewhere!

[samir_ansari]

Until my new kit arrives here is my slightly embarrassing first attempt at astrophotography.

It was taken with the kit lens (18-55mm) of an unmodded 450D with no tripod, by hand, in central london and is a single exposure of 13secs.

I'm not ashamed to put this up because I guess we all had to start somewhere - it will hopefully be nice to look back at this very post further down the line when I have something a bit more respectable

Anyway here is the RAW image:

and a roughly processed and cropped one. It probably wasn't even worth saving through photoshop but it was worth a shot!

[kentronix]

You must have quite steady hands !

13 seconds hand held is not an easy task. Are you planning on getting a tripod ? Even a sub £5 mini tripod resting on a ledge or wheelie bin can give great results. That 18-55 lens is quite good, I often use mine.

[samir_ansari]

I actually bought an heq5 but am still waiting on the dovetail to attatch the camera to it

Also I wanted to know if the lowest dot on orion's sword is m42?

[geordieskies]

hi there, M42 is the central dot in the sword :-)

[samir_ansari]

bingo, thanks geordieskies!

...now, where did I put that zoom lens..

[samir_ansari]

Ok....round 2 in my quest for non embarrasing attempts at capturing the skies.

Unfortunately I still have no power extension leading up to my roof so I cant power my mount's motors or set off camera exposures remotely from a laptop just yet (hence the camera wobble type blur when releasing the shutter and all the star streaks).

Anyway here are the processed photos:

I am quite happy with some of these as they are an improvement on the last set but I have a very long way to go. Any advice or tips would be much appreciated

[samir_ansari]

also the last two of M42 were only single 8 second exposures (the last one was with a 2.5x barlow attached). I thought I was safe up to about 15 secs but I guess not

[kentronix]

To reduce wobble, and assuming the 450d has IR, a IR remote can be about £3 delivered on ebay. The do normal trigger and 2s delay. Combine that up with mirror lock (if you have it) you can get extremely steady shots.

[samir_ansari]

Here is another attempt at Orion:

And this was the raw image:

Any feedback would be great, thanks!

[samir_ansari]

[kris h]

Great set of images Samir

[samir_ansari]

thanks kris! I still have alot of room to improve

[samir_ansari]

Here's another image I took of the moon, but this time with remote shooting from a laptop:

[samir_ansari]

Ok, here we go - Orion Nebula Round 4!