Celestron wrote in post #17962760
What did you use as your light source , that last image looks like daytime inside ? Is that last image a composite , the inside almost looks like a painting . Nice capture of the comet .
I used 5 separate LED touch lights, the kind you can buy at the store for sticking to cupboards and what-not, and 1 LED light stick. 4 of the touch lights were placed under the camera pointing in different directions to illuminate the cave, 1 was placed behind the log I'm sitting on, and the light stick was placed facing the back of the cave to provide some bright back lighting since the sandstone on that side seemed to be a little lighter in color and more light "reflective" if you will. I took 12 pictures total with different settings for the cave walls/surfaces and for the sky, the foreground shots are 1 minute exposures, f4, ISO 400. The sky shots are 1 minute exposures, f4, ISO 1600 with the Skytracker turned on. Cave shots stitched with PTGui and everything edited in Photoshop/Lightroom.
I didn't even know Comet LINEAR was going to be visible right now, when I got down there and was taking pictures I kept wondering what the hell that little green dot/smudge was in all of them. Thought there was a problem with my camera sensor, nice little treat to throw into the pictures by the universe.
tuffty wrote in post #17962851Considering how awesome all your pics are on here I was a little on the fence about posting a pic from my excursion last night... the weather reports were showing it clouding over from previously being clear so I nearly didn't go out but I took a chance and went anyway...
My friend said she could see the milkyway from her garden which was half a mile from the location I chose to shoot from... I appreciate my composure is a little off and tbh I aim to go back when the UK gets its next random clear night and address that as I actually quite liked the potential of a couple of aspects there... It was clearly still too light for any serious captures (yellow on the bortle scale according to the darksite map) despite what she said but I had a go...
Not quite as exciting as the locations you guys seem to have at your disposal but it was more of a learning exercise than anything else for me... so.... here it is...
IMAGE LINK: http://i84.photobucket.com …apy/20160405-IMG_0415.jpg on photobucket
I believe that you can just make out the milkyway (not the core obviously) floating off left of frame just over the top of the tree... which in my book is a win lol... (assuming it is actually the MW, it was in the right direction according to the app anyway)
Let me be the first to tell you to never be afraid to post your pictures, every photographer starts somewhere and 99% of us aren't taking amazing pictures on day 1. My first night sky shots were more or less exactly the same or yours. Looks like you got a little meteor there on the right side just above the building and maybe one just above the hedge and below the tree on the left. When you post others can look and give suggestions, ideas, and comments, notice some things you might have missed yourself. I know I fall into a trap where I'll look at a picture I've taken and edited for hours and think I've gone over it 100%, then immediately after posting someone else will see something and comment and make me go "oh ya, never noticed that!"
One thing I would look into doing is taking a longer exposure at a lower ISO for your foreground, this will help reduce noise (especially in the dark areas), and a separate shot for your sky. Then merge the two in post processing, this will help out image quality tremendously. Stacking sky shots probably won't help much in terms of widefield imaging in light polluted areas, but that's definitely something else worth learning. Stacking is a little more complicated, but in lieu of having a tracking mount it can improve image quality quite a bit as well.
