Complete and utter out-of-the-box newbie...

greenpilot

Hello.

My name is Paul and I am new to the asyrophotography scene. I'm pretty familiar with photography, thanks to a technician diploma in photography from Kevin street. But that was back in the day when it was normal for lecturers to state that dslr,s "would never become useful", and the entire basement of said college smelt of ammonia from the fixers used in the baths. However, I sold all my gear through the years and all I am left with is a Lumix fz330 and a cheap tripod.
I have taken some nice pics of the night sky at f2.8, 25mm and 15sec, with iso set at 3200. But recently, I have tried to take pics of nebula, with no success. Even deep sky stacked could not find enough stars. I know my sensor is tiny, but I should be able to get something. My last attempt was 300x1sec at focal length 400mm, f2.8, iso 3200.
Could anyone guide me as to the optimum settings for my paltry equipment?
Thank you in advance, Paul.

jArgHA

greenpilot wrote: »

Hello.

My name is Paul and I am new to the asyrophotography scene. I'm pretty familiar with photography, thanks to a technician diploma in photography from Kevin street. But that was back in the day when it was normal for lecturers to state that dslr,s "would never become useful", and the entire basement of said college smelt of ammonia from the fixers used in the baths. However, I sold all my gear through the years and all I am left with is a Lumix fz330 and a cheap tripod.
I have taken some nice pics of the night sky at f2.8, 25mm and 15sec, with iso set at 3200. But recently, I have tried to take pics of nebula, with no success. Even deep sky stacked could not find enough stars. I know my sensor is tiny, but I should be able to get something. My last attempt was 300x1sec at focal length 400mm, f2.8, iso 3200.
Could anyone guide me as to the optimum settings for my paltry equipment?
Thank you in advance, Paul.

Hi Paul, a lot depends on how 'dark' the night sky is from your location - or in other words how much interference there is from light pollution. What kind of location are you shooting from?

Another big factor in the equation is what 'target' are you shooting, and how are you finding it in the night sky? The nebulae all vary in brightness, but an obvious bright one to consider first is the Orion Nebula, M42 which is becoming better placed as the winter comes on.

greenpilot

Thank you for the reply. I'm in rural Roscommon. Near the Mayo border. Spectacular night skies. When it's not raining! Thanks for advice. I'll give Orion a shot soon. Plus the arrival of the comet in the next week will be interesting!

jArgHA

greenpilot wrote: »

Thank you for the reply. I'm in rural Roscommon. Near the Mayo border. Spectacular night skies. When it's not raining! Thanks for advice. I'll give Orion a shot soon. Plus the arrival of the comet in the next week will be interesting!

Wow, it sounds like you are really lucky with your dark sky site there. In that case you are definitely at an advantage when it comes to shooting deep sky objects like nebulae and galaxies (and everything else).

For the Orion nebula you can expect good results even with relatively short exposures with a tracking mount (eg. 60 seconds or less). If you have a tracking mount, and the ability to use auto-guiding, you can shoot longer exposures (especially at dark sky sites).

It does make sense to keep things as simple as possible to begin with though, and eg. assuming you have a tracking mount with polar alignment go for exposures of 60s and then stack using eg. DeepSkyStacker.

There is a really useful field of view calculator here, choose Imaging Mode you may be able to feed in camera model and focal length, then choose a target such as M42 to see how it will be framed:
https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

greenpilot

Great advice folks. I took some pictures of the Comet last night. Very disappointed with the results. Took 30 shots at 100mm, f2.8, 3200 iso, 15 seconds each, 20 darks and 20 bias. Stacked them with dss. Stacked image just showed main stars. Took it to Gimp and fiddled around with it until all I could get was a very noisy and grainy almost black and white image with the faint blue green smudge of the comet visible. Anyone any thoughts on how they would have taken it and what the workflow would be on processing the Tiff file in either Gimp or Photoshop? Thanks again folks. P.

Wailin

Hi, you would need much longer than 15 sec to gather any faint light from nebula, comets etc.

A tracker is a must for good results and you'd really want at least 2 min exposures for the faint stuff. No tracker, then any long exposures will just result in star trails.

For decent tracking you need very accurate polar alignment to get 2 min exposures. Can be tricky at first.

This is an early attempt with no auto guiding and 60 sec exposures. Even then you can see slightly oval stars due to polar alignment not being 100%.







I was able to get 2 mins on my next attempt with accurate polar alignment and no oval stars. Big big difference!