New to all this!

[The Grices]

Hello everyone!

I've recently joined this site, and have browsed the various forums and found much useful information.

Let me tell you all a little bit about us. My husband Rob and I are very new to the world of astrophotography. We've used a Meade ET 70mm scope for a few years now to look at all the wonderful stuff up there, and decided recently to upgrade the scope and try to get into astrophotography as well. Rob is the "expert" on the night sky, and I'm interested in the photography side of things as well, but am by no means an expert or even close to it. I'm still on a huge learning curve.

We got our new Clestron 9 1/4" SCT which is on a CG5 Equatorial Go-To mount and have a Cannon EOS 400 DSLR which we've been experimenting with. We've taken a couple of images of the moon and Saturn, and while the moon shots haven't been too bad, we can't seem to focus properly on Saturn.

We also have Registrax that we are trying to learn how to use, and we are using that on my laptop at the moment which has 1gig of memory and seems to be struggling a little bit. We are looking at getting a new computer soon - with more memory and hopefully that will help.

We aren't able to download any free stuff off the net at the moment - we are waiting for our satellite broadband to be installed (hopefully by the end of this month!!Yay!)

We've also noticed the phenomenon that when you buy a new scope it rains for about a month!

We are situated in southern NSW - about half way between Canberra (where we work) and Cooma at about 800m and are blessed with relatively clear skies and are on 8 1/2 acres.

If anyone can help with hints on focussing, software that might help, general hints etc, that would be great. As we don't have the internet at home, I won't be able to respond to any posts until next week (it's a public holiday here on Monday).


Thanks so much - this site is great and I look forward to being an active member and showing you all our wonderful shots.

Trish

(The Grices)

[Radar]

Hi Trish, welcome to the site.

Does your digital camera have an electronic or physical shutter. Sometimes when shooting subjects such as Saturn, the tiny vibration caused by the shutter opening and closing can vibrate the scope enough that an infocus object ends up appearing as if it was out of focus. Keeping dead still, making sure there is no wind are also two things that are important when choosing when to press that shutter.

Are you using a cable release to shoot with Trish? If you are pressing the button the on the camera to take shots this will also be something that is causing major vibrations.

Cheers

Ray

[Mick]

Hello and welcome Trish and Rob, you have some nice equipment there that's for sure. :thumbsupmate:

[Tenacious Del]

Welcome to the site, no need to worry about some of the members here, they are harmless. :thumbsupmate:

[Draig]

HI Trish & Rob,

Welcome to the site.

Sorry I cann't add any words of wisdom on your camera/photo problems (I don't even own a camera yet :Chessy_Smile: - fixed that little problem today :Chessy_Smile: ), but I sure that some of our more experianced members can help.

Cheers Colin

[phoenix]

Welcome to the site, Rob & Trish. :Chessy_Smile:





Cheers Jason :pipethinker:

[wakaleo]

Welcome to MAS, Trish and Rob.

Like you, I am a novice and have found a wealth of helpful information on this site, and a number of the members are very experienced observers and imagers only too willing to share their experience with the less-skilled of us.

I'm sure you'll get the answers you need here, or failing that, where to go to get them.

Welcome again, and let's hope we see some of your images soon.

Jim

[The Grices]

Hello everyone

Thankyou so much for all the welcomes!

Radar - I'm not sure how the shutter is realeased, but we've tried 2 ways.

We have a remote release - that's plugged into the camera and on a cable about a metre long. That still gave us fuzzy images.

We have also used the time delay - put it on 10 second delay before the picture is taken - also fuzzy images.

The moon seems to be ok - it's just getting Saturn into focus that is giving us problems.

We took some images of Jupiter on Sunday night (lovely clear night and before the moon rose) and while you can clearly see it's a planet there are no distinguishing features such as bands - and we got 4 moons as well, but also a bit fuzzy. We also took some images of Venus, which was very bright - I guess we need some filters for that?

I'll try to download a couple of images and post them tomorrow - so everyone can see what we get. That might help with more suggestions.

Where do I look to see how the shutter is opening?

Does anyone else use the same scope as us?

Trish

[Radar]

Hi Trish,

Take the camera in your hand, remove any lenses, face the camera toward you, press the button to take a photo and watch what happens. If the camera has a shutter inside, you will see a black thing quickly pop up and down. If this is the case, you will either have to find a way to lock it open (not sure if cameras like yours can do this) or learn the hat trick. I will explain the hat trick a bit later if you need it. I have to run.

All the best.

Ray

[Draig]

learn the hat trick. I will explain the hat trick a bit later if you need it.

Ray

Hi All,

O.K. Radar I'll bite - what's the "Hat Trick"?

Cheers Colin

[hpcoolahan]

heeee, hoooo, haaa , haven't had to do the hat trick in ages,
dont tell Draig , let him ponder it for a while:pipethinker:

Aww ,,,, you better tell him how it works , it stops that shutter vibration dead still.!! on the film anyway.


Well Trish, and Rob, you've entered a bigger world with heaps to learn,, and guess what ,,just enjoy it!!
Theres always problems, but there are people to help you out, so good luck and enjoy your new hobbie (new lifestyle).

Clear skies
Patrick
:pipethinker:

[Radar]

G'day Pat, I coudn't do that to Draig, he would never talk to me again.

Col sorry I didn't get a chance earlier to say what it was, I was in a rush as usual.

Basically, when you open the shutter on a camera with a cable release (or even without a cable release), the shutter movement can vibrate the image enough so that you end up with a blurry looking photo. To get around this problem, hold a peice of black card in front of the scope, open the shutter, release the cable carefully, wait a few seconds for any vibrations in the scope to settle down, then move the dark piece of card away. This should fix any problems a person may be having with their shutter. Most people don't even release it's the shutter causing the problems because it appears as a focus problem. This is what I think is happening with Trish's setup.

Cheers

Ray

[hpcoolahan]

I know a little about the Canon eos cameras and just remembered something , they do have a mirror lock to solve this problem, when the viewfinder mirror comes up to expose the shutter and film or cmos sensor you get that problem, hopefully the read this , then look at the manual to see how to do it,, hope this helps..

Clear Skies

Patrick

[Draig]

Thanks Ray,


Oh and I suppose thanks Pat for relenting and letting Ray explain it to me.

:Chessy_Smile:

Cheers Colin

[The Grices]

Hello everyone

Thanks for all the advice! I'll check my camera (and manual) tonight and see what it says about the shutter.

I was going to attach a couple of images that we took last week to show you what I mean - but I only have them as tif files that are very big. I can't seem to work out how to save them as jpegs and make them smaller.... can anyone suggest how I do that? When I try to save them as something else - I don't get the option to change the type of file - it only gives the tif option. The images were originally taken as RAW files.

Trish

[Radar]

What software are you using for this Trish? :hmm:

[The Grices]

Hi Radar

I used the software that came with the camera to open the files - it's the only software I have that will deal with RAW files, and that then converts them to TIF - which is what we then put into Registax.

I only have Photoshop Elements 3 at the moment, but thinking it might need to be upgraded??

Trish

[hpcoolahan]

Hi there Trish, not sure about photoshop elements (i have cs2) but if you can open the finnished pictures with photoshop, then go to the file tab , open the drop down box and look for one called (save for web) , hope its there, you can then save as j-peg . if it works ,have the quality up high as it will go ,but change the size of the picture to get under Radars 146kb limit

Good luck
Patrick

[Radar]

Hi Trish, yeah Pat is right, use the "save for web" feature if you have it. Make sure the physical size is less than 800 x 700 pixels as well.

Cheers

Ray

[Draig]

Hi all,

Sorry to but in on your post Trish but I tought I would ask this question here and hopefully one of our resident experts can answer it.

What is the best format for taking Astrophotos - RAW or Jpeg?

CHeers Colin

[Radar]

Hi Col,

I don't think that RAW is actually a format. I think RAW simply means that the image is untouched and still in the format that it was captured in - raw.

Your camera may capture jpeg or tiff images, and as long as those images stays unchanged by photoshop or automatic camera adjustments then it's safe to say that those images are RAW.

That's my understanding of it mate.

Ray

[The Grices]

Thanks guys!

I didn't get a chance to check out the shutter last night - had a meeting that finished very late. Will check it out tonight I hope.

Thanks also for the info on saving the file - I'm pretty sure I do have the option to save as web - so will also try that tonight!

Keeping fingers crossed for clear skies this weekend so we can get out and take more photos!!

Trish

[wakaleo]

Gidday Trish

I use Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) for all my digital image resizing. It is a small but very capable programme and will open a wide range of file formats, including the Canon RAW format.

Once downloaded, open the programme (or right click the image you want to resize in Windows Explorer, choose Open With, and select Irfanview), open your image, select 'Image'/Resize/Resample and select a size that reduces it to the amount that you can upload to MAS (usually 146.5Kb).

And if you download the plugins, you'll get even more functionality.

The programme will also give you the option to save the resized image in different formats.

Happy resizing!

Jim

[Draig]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for posting that link.

It will come in handy for me as well.

Cheers Colin

[Astrokid]

I am new to all this to. reading these threads is a huge help. :thumbsupmate:

[The Grices]

Hello Everyone!

I've been off the air for a little while with an office move, but am now back on the air!

Radar, I've checked my camera - and have found the mirror lockup - this should help with future shots - unfortunately we have had rain over the weekend, so no stargazing!!

I've managed to save the shots in a suitable file size (thanks everyone for the really helpful advice!)

I think that once we try with the shutter already open this may help. We are also in the process of trying to order Images Plus, and this may also help.

Love to hear your advice on how to make the attached shots better.

Trish

[The Grices]

Hi guys

I knew the attached pictures were bad - but I didn't expect them to stop all communication!!

I would love to have some advice on how to improve them, so that I can post some good ones eventually. Don't be embarrassed at them being bad - I know they are - I want to know how to make them better.

:yesplease:

Trish

[Radar]

Hi Trish, this post must have slipped past me.

The first photo of Jupiter is a good starting point. Basically it is overexposed. As far as I know with planetary imaging, you won't capture the moons and Jupiters surface detail in the same photo. This is because the moons are to faint and the planet is to bright. So usually to get the two objects appearing properly they are stacked in photoshop. Also I'm not sure how well a DSLR can do planets. People prefer to use cheap webcams for this. There are others here that know on this - Beren, Tony or Gerry. The same goes for Saturn.

The moon is great. Good focus and pretty sharp detail. Moon always makes for good practice.

As far as I can tell though Trish, your images are tracking well and in focus, they are simply overexposed.

Here is something you can try in the meantime. Find the ISO setting on your DSLR and turn it down. Try settings such as 100, 50 and lower. See how that goes, this will help not over expose the planets.

The other thing you can try is to cover front of the telescope with some black paper. Then cut a small hole inside the paper (anywhere). A hole of say two inches. This limits the amount of light coming in so helps reduce the over exposure.

Experiment with those two techniques and see how you go.

If your photos are bad, we will reply, promise :Chessy_Smile:

[The Grices]

Thanks Radar

The advice is welcome - now we'll wait until the next new moon and try out some more shots - that is if the rain and clouds ever go away!!

Trish & Rob
:ta_clap5:

[astro-gran]

Hello and a hearty welcome to this hobby. From my own experience in taking
images of the planets can be tricky,” scope collimation” and “seeing” play a big role in imaging these objects. Many folks take hundreds of
small exposures. You can then go through them and pick out the best ones. One of the cheapest ways to focus is to use a technique called the “Hartmans Mask” it will cost around about $1.00 to make and it works well.
Here is the link. http://cometman.com/Mask.html Hope this helps. :)