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Forum: General Talk
04-15-2024, 04:34 AM
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I'm a short distance north of Cromarty, and it's a good feeling getting what feels like a personalised forecast of the local sea state
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-07-2024, 02:00 AM
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Forum: General Photography
01-21-2024, 02:39 AM
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Agreed! 58N and summer's a write-off astrophotography wise
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-15-2023, 01:25 AM
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I wrote to Ricoh yesterday explaining the interval mode issues and had a reply this morning saying they're investigating. Good to know they're responding to feedback
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
12-09-2023, 02:30 AM
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Thick clouds in the Highlands for the whole of next week by the looks of it, but I'll try it at the first opportunity
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
11-24-2023, 02:34 AM
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Useful insights, thanks. I've only been using it less than a couple of years and I guess adapting to quirks so likely blaming my own inexperience/unfamiliarity.
I agree with your comments on snap/flatpak btw
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Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom
08-18-2023, 06:39 AM
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Islay whisky has to be worth a try then
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
09-03-2022, 05:07 AM
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It's taken some time for me to get around to doing this, but searching in the forums I couldn't find anyone who has tried using all 4 images from a pixelshift RAW file to create a superresolution image. Here's the original shot of Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, Scotland.
This is a 100% crop of a detail. The file was processed using Rawtherapee using pixelshift method to demosaic
To produce a superresolution image I've extracted each frame from the DNG and scaled them to 200%. I've then used Hugin's align_image_stack to align all the images, followed by ImageMagick's convert to take pixel averages for all 4 images to produce a 14590 pixel wide image. Below is a 100% crop from that image.
As you can see there's a significant amount of extra detail in the stonework.
Obviously the colour fidelity advantages of the pixelshift processed image are lost, and there's a little blurring where there has been motion in the trees, but overall I'm pleased with what's possible.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
01-16-2023, 04:21 AM
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Agree with John, double reflections off standard mirrors are quite annoying. First surface mirrors are quite fragile, so mirror polished SS is a bit more useful.
There's also black perspex which will give a single reflection.
Image below was taken on perspex, backlit flash with black card blocking direct light from the flash
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Forum: Lens Clubs
02-16-2020, 12:44 AM
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I have spent over a year deliberating about this lens it's clear it is out of the ordinary, but it wasn't until an irresistible offer turned up at SRS Microsystems that I realised quite how out of the ordinary this lens is. I think I'm going to have a lot of fun getting the most out of it.
Taken in the Highlands along the local dune system
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Forum: Travel, Events, and Groups
10-18-2022, 01:08 AM
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
09-03-2022, 05:38 AM
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At a guess if I take four successive single shots and work on those it may well produce the same effect if there's pixel size movements from the tripod. the nice thing about using pixelshift images is they're all in the one file and use electronic shutter. From a single file all shots will be identical, so it'll end up a blocky version of the first crop
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Forum: General Photography
02-28-2022, 03:34 AM
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It is! You just have to live in the Highlands ;)
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
11-11-2021, 08:11 AM
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Nipped into Inverness on Tuesday and arrived at Kessock Bridge along with the rain
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Forum: Lens Clubs
07-30-2020, 07:16 AM
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This lens now seems to spend more time on my camera than any other. Great images stopped down as well as wide open
Rigs in the Cromarty Firth, Highland
Lighthouse on the Tarbat Peninsula, Highland
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Forum: Photo Critique
10-19-2021, 01:01 PM
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That should help with vibration, but if it's swinging in any way that could also be the source of problems.
As a rule I tend to shoot on a 2 second timer and move back from the camera each shot, so would be likely to see any disturbance at the start of the shot.
ProfessorBuzz's suggestion of tripod sag seems a good place to look too.
A quick measurement of the length of the tick relative to length of star trail should give you a good guide to duration of this effect which may help with diagnosis
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
10-18-2021, 03:59 AM
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Condensation is a major problem with astro on cool nights - I guess those are the forced conditions. A dew heater is the best option here.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
10-18-2021, 12:02 AM
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I agree with CarbonR in getting a lens heater. Lens glass cools quickly and the nearby air reaches dewpoint and condenses on the glass, more often the outer surface, but can be inside as well
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
09-30-2021, 10:01 AM
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Stellarium is a great piece of software for exploring the night sky from your location and planning imaging sessions
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
09-30-2021, 02:07 AM
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A quick curves tweak of photo 2 shows the image is sharp across the field and there's little coma and CA. Some star trailing at 10 seconds which can be corrected with astrotracer or a telescope mount.
The image is under exposed, and using higher ISO (e.g 800) would allow you to capture more light and see more stars. Of course, this introduces more noise and the solution to that is stacking multiple images in software like Siril, or Deep Sky Stacker. I'd say F4 is good for this lens BTW
If you do follow up you do realise you're off down a very deep rabbit hole! :D
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-20-2021, 06:27 AM
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This wasn't a dig at your original post, I think it's a fascinating question. My own opinion is that there are some great manual lenses from decades ago as many here will attest. Lack of autofocus is of no hindrance to those of us who take landscapes for instance, and the way a vintage lens renders can be a thing of great beauty. Add to that the pleasure of using some of these lenses can be a pleasure in itself
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
08-09-2021, 11:19 PM
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Yeah, the NUC is a celeron, the desktop an overclocked modern i7. I don't really need FITS files until post processing and that can all be done in Siril. I just never figured a way to force Indi/Ekos to write just RAW.
I did consider a Raspberry Pi, but compared to the NUC I already had it was a bit under powered. Not being a hardware sort of person I also figured I would do whatever needed in software
I've not come across the Rainbow Astro before - probably as it was out of my budget, but it seems to have sparked a lot of discussion on Cloudy Nights, and looks really portable. As for the Takahashi - you probably can't go wrong there.
I did have a play with my Tamron 70-200 and astrotracer and was quite impressed with the results. That's what spurred me on to get the Askar
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
08-09-2021, 12:48 AM
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Brilliant! now the real fun begins :D
I run Indiweb on my NUC to control starting/stopping devices which can be launched from Ekos I think.
One Issue I cam across which caused me hassle (I may not properly understand the ekos/indi interface properly) is where to store images. If I allow images to copy across from the indi server to my desktop then it performs a very time consuming conversion from RAW to FITS meaning there's a long lag between shots which means there's less imaging time. My solution was to store images locally on the remote indiserver and use rsync to keep my desktop in sync
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
08-07-2021, 10:50 PM
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
08-05-2021, 11:52 PM
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Cloudy Nights forums are a great source of technical info across a wide range of gear, technique and more. Likely as not you'll find a majority of your questions already answered there with some expertise!
There's a 3rd party driver for Pentax cameras with Indilib that definitely supports the K1/K1-ii using AFAIK the Ricoh SDK. I can't remember whether I had to do my own build of indilib to get it all working. I live in the Scottish Highlands and we still don't have enough darkness yet for me to get the scope and NUC back out.
Quite a few people use a Raspberry Pi as a remote Indi server. The latest generation devices are quite powerful and cost effective. There's a fair degree of complexity getting everything to talk together properly: camera, guidescope, mount, KStars etc, that any means to simplify setup is worth it, at least to start with
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