Camera Labs

A 50D with the 17-85mm kit lens at 17 mm f/4 , a tripod , seven 15 secondes exposures at ISO 1600 , Iris post-processing for registration , Photoshop for a bit of color balance , noise reduction , levels , unsharp mask and 30 minutes later I get this :



There're still lot of artefacts , I didn't do any dark also ( I'm lazy ) but I'm pretty impressed with the 50D sensibility . Now I need a good wide angle lens , more time and a clear sky

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr

Nice. I want to have a go at something like this, before it sets too early in the day. Assuming light pollution doesn't beat me first.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

It's a lot easier than it looks And I got some light pollution too since I live about 4 miles from the capital . I tried 30 seconds exposures , but stars were becoming trails ( 100% crop , CR2 file ), so I had to reduce them to 15 seconds . And thanks for looking ^^

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr

Light pollution isn't great here as I'm in a city. I can just about get away with long exposures but there's a lot of red. It's not looking too cloudy so there's some chance I'll get a go tonight after all, if the moon isn't too close. Now I just need it to hurry up and get darker

Just checked a star map - Sagittarius is too low in the sky from where I am, so I've already missed my chance this year to get the core region. I can still aim for Cygnus at least. Altair is now visible naked eye so hopefully the rest will come out soon too.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Hehe , I see your problem . And yeah , LP filters are very expensive ( I use lumicon ones in 1.25" and 2" ) , but I think UHC are better ( expensives too ) . Seeing your shots , the one taken with the canon is pretty impressive considering the pollution you got in your neighbourhood

Another thing about focusing : I found that focus to infinity isn't accurate on my lens , so I had to use Live View on a bright celestial object , and we got luck to have Jupiter at the zenith and to my surprise , the focus point was around 8-9 meters on the scale .

I can't wait for late November/early December to be able to shoot toward our southern celestial pole and more precisely both magellanic clouds This time I'll use my equatorial mount and autoguiding . I'm sure the 70-200 f/4 will shine there

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr

I have a load of data Plenty of wide angle shots around Cygnus. Now trying to figure out what to do with it...

I normally would use live view for fine focus, but with wide angle lenses I can't see anything even zoomed in. So infinity mark will have to do for now. Jupiter is too close to the moon for me to use at the moment.

As feared, the moon was bright and killed any chance of anything low in the sky. Cygnus was overhead so that's as good as it gets, but on wide angle shots I can still see the glow of the moon lighting up cloud nearby.

Got lots of subs but how to deal with the rotation? Tried feeding it into registax but that software never liked me. Can't figure out how to get it to do rotation correction as it always complains about too much drift.

Looked up Iris. Now I remember why I never tried it before Maybe now is a good time to learn...

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Registax isn't good for stellar registration , only planetary :p
Use Iris , and the command Stellar registration > Global matching with quadratic transform ( everything is here )

And here you'll have everything you need to use Iris . And yeah , you got to dive in or you'll get disgusted very quickly

I used and still use Iris over Registax any day once you get used to it , Iris is really more powerfull .

Iris can do some good thing on plantery imaging also

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr

Is that your photo of Mars? It's very impressive... be great to know what it was taken with and just how many exposures were stacked...

PS =- nice milky way photos

Still playing with Iris... slowly overcoming the learning curve. Nothing worth showing yet, and not sure there will be. Even though the moon was far out of shot, there was enough stuff in the air for it to give a white gradient I can't process out so far. Still trying

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Hang on Popo

Yeah Gordon , I did that back in August 2003 ( when Mars was at nearest point from earth ) with my C14 + Televue Powermate 2.5x barlow + Vesta Pro modified webcam , captured with Astrosnap and registered with Iris . If I recall correctly , that was a 3000 frames avi video and about 1200 frames were kept . We had nearly perfect conditions during July/August , it was really a great Mars season ( nearly 0 turbulence and great seeing during 6 weeks )

Here my recap from that year ( not really DSLR but since you seems interested ) :



Sorry for the french captions , I posted that on an astronomic french community forum

Edit : APN = digital camera , décollimaté = bad collimation , C8 = Celestron C8 SCT , C14 = Celestron C14 SCT , and dates are in the DD/MM/YY format.

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr

Those are great images - coincidentally, I was also in France during August 2003 for Mars, with a friend who had a C14! I'm not sure where his images are though... I was just an observer on that trip...

I was in Tahiti at that moment , Mars was almost at zenith , in France they had it at about 40-45° altitude if I recall correctly.

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr