Forum: Post Your Photos!
10-10-2018, 07:45 PM
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From a quick trip through the Adirondacks last Monday.
Lower Cascade Lake
West branch Ausable River at High Falls Gorge |
Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
06-19-2018, 09:11 AM
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I had the IR-cut filter and anti aliasing filter removed a couple months back, and now have a capable astronomy camera with a bare sensor. I think it was about $250 conversion at spencer's camera, and is now a capable atro-photography camera.
The Eagle Nebula with the Pillars of Creation in the center I shot 90 lights and 30 darks at 45-second exposures and ISO 400 with my Skywatcher Maksutov-Newtonian 190.
The Lagoon/Trifid Nebulas with Webb's Cross in the top right corner I shot 90 lights and 30 darks at 30-sec exposures and ISO 400 with my Takahashi FSQ106ED.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
05-11-2017, 05:03 PM
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Another shot using my K-5 camera. Prime focus on a Skywatcher MN190 telescope. Enjoy!
Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82) and Bode's Galaxy (Messier 81)
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
04-06-2017, 01:33 PM
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
03-27-2017, 02:12 PM
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Astro season is nearing its end here. Still, new moon opens up few possibilities.
Black Hole Generator
Starlight Beacon
Frozen in Time |
Forum: Post Your Photos!
03-27-2017, 10:53 PM
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Shot on the night of March 27th. A big showing from the Aurora Australis. My third time getting to see it. But this time it was on another level. Although you can see the colours with you naked eye, I could see the beams and you could tell when it was erupting, you could see the beams dancing over the mountains and I kept firing the shutter. I did another time lapse but have not put it together yet.
This was a three shot Pano from the K-50 and Sigma, proving to be a great combo of lens and price for what I shot. Edited lightly in lightroom. This is pretty much what the jpegs looked like in the back of the camera while shooting. Aurora by Eric Ducourneau, on Flickr
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
06-20-2016, 06:09 PM
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I have a K-30 and the o-gps1 unit but I suspect the K-1 astrotracer is pretty much the same. I've been using it for over two years now and really enjoy working with it with lenses from 16 to 105 mm when I can get from 40 s to over 3 min worth of precise tracking. I've had success with the 200 mm at 30-40 s. My 400mm won't give me more than 10 s. (It's hard to calibrate with such a lens!). Some have reported much longer tracking though. As Adam pointed precise calibration is key, especially with 100 mm +. Here's a link to the official Pentax calibration page. The footnotes are very interesting. You can browse the o-gps1 flickr group for some examples. Here are a couple of mine.
10 X 40 s iso 800 with a Sigma 105 mm f/2.8
Pano of five images, 2 min exposure each with a M28/2.8 lens
Clear skies!
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
04-24-2016, 07:13 PM
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The F lens completely flipped a horse around.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-23-2015, 05:12 PM
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Wanted to highlight the Sigma 150-500's capabilities when paired with the K3II, which makes cropping a real pleasure. I'm enjoying this lens more and more since coupling it with the K3 sensor. Focal length 440mm. |
Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-20-2015, 06:50 AM
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To whom do you refer I wonder... :rolleyes:
In answer to your question... in my case that'll be the taxman. :(
It's a doddle compared to all that techy stuff your doing to those stunning images. :cool:
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-16-2015, 01:44 PM
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M31, andromeda galaxy. K3 w/ O-GPS-1 astrotracer, DA 50-135mm, F4 ISO 1600 6 shots stacked around 20 secs at 135mm.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
10-03-2015, 10:49 PM
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That blood super moon was fun wasn't it? :)
I don't have a lens longer than my Pentax D-FA 100mm 2.8 Macro, so I had fun with my new photoshop cc subscription. :)
For my own recollection later, and If anyone cares about the process I used:
1) Tale your 16 consecutive shots each 15 seconds apart @ F/4, 1sec, ISO1000. Do the same with the lens cap on.
2) In photoshop, pull in the 16 "dark" shots with the lens cap as layers, create a smart object out of all the layers, then set the stack mode to median. This gives a nice dark bias frame to get rid of sensor bias.
3) Then pull in the 16 "light" shots without the cap as layers, and do the same smart object->median trick. Since the stars move, they won't appear in the median. The moon will though, so duplicate the layer and set the stack mode to minimum to get rid of it.
4) Then combine the two layers using a layer mask - the median one is preferred, with the minimum one only over the moon area.
5) Then copy the dark bias frame and merged it into this frame using the "subtract" blending mode in order to remove the bias.
6) Then Blur->Gaussian 100px. Heal the spot over where the moon was to make it smooth. Now we have an atmospherics frame with all the reflected light from the city.
7) Then take the atmospherics frame and dark bias frame and "added" them using the linear dodge blending mode, and merged into a single "offset" frame.
8) Now make 16 copies of the offset frame and "subtract-merge" them into each of the 16 "light" shots - we now have pseudo-calibrated images (flat field seems negligible on the 100mm macro at f/4)
9) Crop out a section of the image that contains the moon across all layers, then save it as a different PSD.
10) Follow the guide here to do super resolution: A Practical Guide to Creating Superresolution Photos with Photoshop
10a) Some notes: auto-align wouldn't work, i had to register them all into place manually (nudging helps). I also found the smart sharpen gaussian mode better suited than lens blur as in the guide, followed by another small amount of unsharp mask.
11) Cool now we have our moon - select it with the magic wand until you get the whole thing. Then expand the selection 5 pixels or so, invert selection, feather selection 2px, and hit delete to clear out everything but your moon.
12) Back in the original PSD, it's time to align the stars - again auto-align doesn't work. I found aligning in the center, then distortion-type transform from two corners seemed to work (the star movement isn't linear across the scene). Don't worry about the moon not lining up, it doesn't move the same speed as the stars.
13) Once you've arduously registered the star fields, convert to smart object->median. Rasterize and heal out the moon. Now you've got a star field worth enhancing.
14) Add adjustment layers with curves, exposure, hue/saturation, and channel mixer until you get your stars where you want them without much noise (blue channel had the most noise for me).
15) Copy and paste your super-resolved super moon onto the spot where the you healed out the other moon (yes it'll be twice as big, but that's OK right?) :)
16) Export as TIFF, then bring it into lightroom for any final touches.
Yeah that was probably too complicated for me to do for this 100mm shot, but it was fun to learn how to do it. :)
The single frame starfield, single frame moon, and post super-res moon are posted below too so you can see the difference it made.
Do any of you have suggestions on what I could have done better? I'm fairly new to astro imaging. If I had done it again, I would have taken 32 shots instead of 16. Then I wouldn't have had to worry about the extra minimum stack mode frame due to slow moon movement. I also do wish photoshop had an auto-align that worked on starfields - is there a good plugin to do such a thing?
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-01-2015, 12:12 PM
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No one did a shoot of the moon during the eclipse? :confused:
So I took this one:
E.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
11-06-2014, 06:04 AM
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Recent pics with my new Sigma APO DG 300/2.8
Messier 31: 15 images (20secs, ISO1600, f/2.8) stacked with DeepSkyStacker
Messier 45: 32 images (20secs, ISO1600, f/2.8) stacked with DeepSkyStacker
My deep sky collection (thanks to the O-GPS1 unit) : Accueil / Albums / Astrophoto | PhotosSteph |