The *Official Photography Thread*

Very nice! I have only tried the moon a few times. My 70mm can't do too much so I don't even try. But I used my schools scope to get this one: full res is a little over 10k x 10k


Had some crazy clouds roll in before I could get the last few frames, and somehow I missed the middle.. Telescope went down a few weeks after this shot and hasn't been back to 100% yet.

 

I use Nebulosity by Stark Labs for capture and stacking.

I love the colors you got on M42, mine didn't resolve colors very well as you can tell even though it's a one shot color astrocamera. I'm not sure if thats just due to the small refactor and me being 40 miles from phoenix even though Orion was somewhat away from the light pollution.


My rig is:

Orion Starshoot Pro v2.0 OSC Astro camera
Orion 80ED 600mm, F/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor
iOptron iEQ45 computerized German-Equitorial mount
Orion Magnificent mini finder scope w/Orion Starshoot Autoguider
Nebulosity 3.0 for capture and stacking/processing
PHD software for Autoguiding

I also have an 8" Celestron SCT (2000mm, F/10) tube with a 0.63x focal reducer bringing it down to ~1200mm and F6.3 but don't have a way to mount the autoguiding finder to it yet for various reasons so I'm looking forward to getting that going for more aperture.

The camera was picked up in the used market but I like that it has thermal-electric cooling even though I probably could've gotten a good DSLR for the same or a little more money.

The biggest problems I have are wind, and I think at this point aperture, just not enough light is getting to the camera to get a lot of detail and needing longer total exposure times since it's such a small scope. The 8" tube will give me more light but a vastly reduced field of view. The optics on it are only ok as it's a 12 year old tube but at this point I'm making the best with what I've got. I'd rather be fighting optics then a flaky mount and guiding issues so I spent some coin on the mount.

 

Monte:

Is Enfuse the program that's putting "fused" after the file name when you use it?

I believe Photomatix is going for $99 now. I believe there is a discount code out there though.


Rich:

There is also a HDR program in the google package called HDR Efex Pro that I use that works pretty good. It's in the Nik collection for $150 you get 7 programs that do a lot. It includes:

Analog Efex (Film look)
Silver Efex Pro (B&W conversion)
HDR Efex Pro (HDR editing)
Dfine (Noise reduction)
Color Efex Pro (filters for color correction, retouching, and creative effects)
Viveza (Selectively adjust the color and tonality)
Sharpener Pro (Sharpening)

You need Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Lightroom to run them though.

It has a window in Photoshop for quick opening of the Nik collection. I'll get a screen capture to show you how it looks.

Edit: Here you go.

 

You can get the cheaper photomatix, its $39 I think.

 

yea it is.

Every time i use it i am blown away, just so natural looking compared to photomatrix. What my truck photos are like in my sig

 

Yeah, those pics turned out really good.

 

Any of you guys sell prints? What do you charge for them?

 

Tell me what you want and I'll come up with a number for you.

 

Haha. That light streak shot I won that photo contest on facebook with, a few people have asked to buy prints. I have looked at some local photographer sites, and they seem outrageous. I dont want to screw this up.

 

I can't speak for the other program, but I use Photomatrix and I'm really happy with the results.







I'm amateur as they come, but I don't think these ones look too over cooked. All done with Photomatrix.

 

Yea reall yhappy with it.

i call the 1st one over done. When the whites turn that pastel gray...its over done.

2nd one is on the verge.

3rd one isn't too bad though.

Just my opinion though.

 

No lots use it..but like i said..no holy mother of god thing that does everything 100% amazing. PS is close..but you can stich photos better with other programs..HDR better with other programs...

just more options i guess..

All that really matters is what your comfortable with and know how to use it well and get good results.

 

I appreciate the critique!

I've done a few that I deliberately over cooked and they're like "Wow." There's no mistaking what I did there.

I'm trying to perfect the art of doing HDR that doesn't look like it's HDR.

 

its hard! i know what ya mean man! haha yea photomatrix likes to push it into not quite so natural looking...haha but fun to mess with too

 

I finally got LR5. Any plugins y'all recommend

 

Enfuse..

haven't looked into a lot more honestly..i should though...

 

I use SmugMug to host my site, the print shops they deal with are very professional

 

About 4-5 days ago B&H sent out emails to customers, at least some of them, that had a discount code for LR at $50 off. They are one time use and all the ones posted on forums of course are already used and no longer valid. If someone has a code that they don't plan on using I would GREATLY appreciate it if you would PM me the code. Thanks!

Edit: Belay my last, I received a code on another forum. Great Deal!

 

This is cool

http://twistedsifter.com/2012/12/top-100-pictures-of-the-day-2012/

 

Wow, that is awesome.