Posts Made By: Charles Stevenson

First light with the Canon 6D and Magic Lantern hacks tonight! :-) Plenty of goofing around with buttons, menus, and lenses. This is with the Tokina 11-16mm Wide Angle SD f/2.8 (IF) DX tracking on my CG5 mount for 30s.

Hi Steven,

Have you seen the newly released Nikon D810A astrophotography DSLR camera? The price is pretty high but it looks pretty amazing.

Best,
Charlie

Steven Gaber said:

I am considering the purchase of an Orion Parsec 8300C camera, but I have one question: Why did Orion stop offering these? It looks like it would be a good camera -- small, cooled, efficient, reasonably priced.

However, I have been told that the Parsec is not compatible with ASCOM Version 6. Maybe that was the reason?

So now I am faced with the dilemma of whether to buy this camera or go with my original plan to buy a Nikon D5300. If I go this route, I will have it modified for astronomical use by Spencer Camera, which will make it comparable to the equivalent model of Canon. (I am a long-time Nikon addict, with many Nikkor lenses that can still be used with the new digital cameras.)

What do you think?

Thanks for your views on the matter.

Steve Gaber
Oldsmar, FL

Sounds like a great product, Roland! Several of the guys from my club are going. I'll be home with the kids. Wishing everyone a fantastic time! ~ C

Here's my other take from the same night... M81 & M82 in the same frame. :-) The stars on the periphery seem to bow out and I'm wondering if that indicates a collimation problem? They seem circular in the center of the image but on the left stretch left and on the right stretch right. Lots of problems with sky glow and vignetting and on and on. I imagine some of the gurus would be adept at removing all the gradients and other artifacts. Here's what I have thus far...

Which ones are these, Rolando?

Roland Christen said:

It's galaxy season!

Spring is here, and dozens upon dozens of galaxies are within reach of small scopes. Time to get out under mild spring skies and observe!

Rolando

Take #2... same data... :-) A little more punch to the color since we all like the almost sickeningly blue/purple galaxy look here. ;-) I brought out the galaxy with the sponge tool.

I've been experimenting with a new DSLR postprocessing workflow that's basically DSS -> PS -> Adobe Camera Raw 8.8 for noise reduction and then back into PS. Anyone else liking Adobe Camera Raw? It's fantastic! I downloaded all of my lens profiles today. Mostly using it for terrestrial but the noise feature is very useful. Maybe not as robust as noise ninja but it's the best thing I've got...

Getting back to whirlpool... the previous version looked terrible to me the day after I sent it and still does. I really believe that I need to start recalibrating my eyes on a color chart. I have one from the Tony Hallas DVD open on the right-hand side of my screen in PS now. The other part may be due to my LCD laptop display.

We had to do a quick run to the store tonight and while picking up things for the kids wandered past a floor model LED TV just sitting there for 20% off the clearance price. Our old TV is a CRT and weighs at least 40lbs so we decided to go for it. I now am using it as the monitor for our living room computer and logged in remotely to the laptop for PS. The colors are MUCH better! Now if I can only fix the hole in my pocket that astrophotography has caused... ;-)

Larry Simpson said:

Sorry for the dumb question but how do you include a photo of the item in the Ad.?

Larry

It's available in the second stage of Ad creation (see screenshot).

Bravo! :-)

Sounds like a wonderful experience! :-) Thanks for sharing.

LOL. :-)