The Milky Way with Jupiter

[Rubber_Duck]

Wow..!!!

This is very nice..!!!
I'm very shock to see the milky way pix...

I tot we need to use a super tele-lens then able to take pix of the stars...

Thanks for sharing.... Now I know DSLR can do more than that...

Sorry.. still a newbie.....:sweatsm:

 

[weixing]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice.
How do you focus?

Many of my pics are out of focus. At first i tried to focus on Jupiter, or the lights of the boats in the distance. Then I tried MF, and AF. Some of my shots, especially the one around Cygnus (darker part of milky way) came out all out of focus.

Focusing is always very difficult in Astrophotography. For shooting with camera lens, I always use the auto focus method first. If I can't get a good focus, I'll try focus and shoot method. It'll be easier to focus if your camera got live view.

Anyway, below is what I usually do:
1) Switch to manual focus first and turn the focusing ring all the way to the infinity end.
2) Then I point at the brightest star or planet and slowly turn the focusing ring back until the star/planet appear brightest.
3) Then I switch to auto focus and place that star/planet directly over the selected focusing point and try to auto focus. If it can achieve focus, I'll switch back to manual focus, so that the lens won't auto focus again when shooting. If I can't get a good focus using auto focus, I'll do 1 and 2 again, but this time take a short expourse image at the highest ISO setting every time I change the focus by a little and check the focus using the image.

By the way, it is very difficult and time consuming to get good focus especially if the seeing is bad (when the stars blink a lot), so you need a lot of patient.

Have a nice day.

 

[redstone]

Wow..!!!

This is very nice..!!!
I'm very shock to see the milky way pix...

I tot we need to use a super tele-lens then able to take pix of the stars...

Thanks for sharing.... Now I know DSLR can do more than that...

Sorry.. still a newbie.....:sweatsm:

Hehe. Thank you!

You can do wide field like a "starscape". Take photos of the constellations, milky way. For super tele or telescope attached, you'll need a tracking mount. Otherwise you'll have star trails

 

[slaam]

Btw anyone knows the method of doing stacking?

I do.. i used it for microscope work before..

 

[weixing]

Hi,
By the way, for those who interested in Astronomy and Astrophotography, there'll be a short Astro-Imaging workshop during SingAstro Astronomy 2008 organise by SingAstro Forum.

The event is on 16 Aug 2008 (10am - 5pm) at Glass Hall, Singapore Art Museum. Admission is free.

Have a nice day.

 

[Simon_84]

did TS turn on the noise reduction function in the d40 ?

 

[redstone]

did TS turn on the noise reduction function in the d40 ?

This was shot using RAW. The noise! I must find a way to remove it! Weixing!

 

[Simon_84]

This was shot using RAW. The noise! I must find a way to remove it! Weixing!

you can try to use noise ninja or neat image...both of these are freeware.

 

[redstone]

Tried. Quality isn't very good.

 

[Simon_84]

Tried. Quality isn't very good.

actually when you chose nikon over canon, be prepared to accept noise as a problem with CCDs unless is d300...
after all, having some noise is better than having no photo at all...

 

[redstone]

NN reduced the noise, but the pic is still grainy. Will try to repair futher.

 

[weixing]

This was shot using RAW. The noise! I must find a way to remove it! Weixing!

Hi,
It's always very difficult to reduce noise in Astrophoto especially a single shot image at high ISO. May be you can post a 100% crop of the image, so that we can see how bad is the noise.

Anyway, I recommend you to read the deep sky stacker software website:
http://www.deepskystacker.com. It had some recommendation on how to take better astrophoto.

Good luck and happy shooting.

Have a nice day.

 

[redstone]

I reduced noise a bit in RAW, but doesn't seem to work.

 

[Daedalus Trent]

wow, such an awesome shot with a kit lens! :thumbsup:
you inspire me!

 

[redstone]

Thanks for the compliment! Did trial and error for the previous few hours. :bsmilie:

 

[redstone]

Re-edit of the original image.

 

[aselley]

Wow...knowing the difficulty in just trying to shoot the moon I have to say I am very much impressed.

 

[redstone]

Wow...knowing the difficulty in just trying to shoot the moon I have to say I am very much impressed.

I believe the moon is much harder because of the contrast between the brightly lit areas and the shadows (cast by the crater ridges). Need to do lots of stacking a la HDR, you also need a super tele lens or telescope. But for starscapes and Mliky Way, its really no difference fromt taking a night scenery.

 

[billycadiz]

wow!!! this is nice.. what is that light streaks on the image that looks like a line or something?

 

[redstone]

wow!!! this is nice.. what is that light streaks on the image that looks like a line or something?

What light streak?

The stars look like short lines? Yea, its star trails and are unavoidable at long shutter speeds if you don't have a tracking mount.