Some more newbie questions

Hello all,

The following is a picture I took with my OM-1 piggybacked on my 8" LX200. The camera had the standard 50mm lens and was set at f/2.8 and exposure time was 15 minutes. One thing about the picture: I know I have to adjust the piggyback bracket because as you can see in this particular picture, the tube of the scope shows up in the image. However, my question is the following: It looks as if there was vignetting in this picture. The corners and even the top of the image look darker than the central portion of it. This happened in almost all of my pictures. I didn't think vignetting would be this drastic in a 50mm lens. Is this normal? I'll have to work on the sky fog factor as you can see. I bet a lot of the stars are washed out with that super light background. Still in the early learning stages, so if anyone could pass on some advice I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance!
Chris

Attached Image:

Hi Chris,

That's a reasonable start! I don't know Olympus
lenses, but vignetting in a fast 50mm lens isn't
unheard of. The Olympus *could* be worse since
making the body small necessarily introduced some
compromise in coverage. Stop the lens down to f/4.

The pic looks a bit like my first piggy-back
attempts for which I used Fuji 800 X-tra.
Try Elite-Chrome 200 at 25-45min at f/4 from
a decent site.

The good news is you're suffiently well-aligned
avoid trailing.

Good luck!
Todd

Wide open you will get vignetting with all but the finest lenses. As Todd said, stop the aperature down to the next value. It will require more exposure time. Don't worry about the scope in the picture. That won't be a problem at greater focal lengths. Good start.
Chris

Chris,
Like the other post before me, you will need to stop the lens down to reduce the vignetting. This photo looks like it was taken from a light polluted site, is that correct? If so and you plan to shoot piggy back from this site, you may want to invest in some sort of light pollution filter for your lenses. Huetec (sp?) makes a great filter and I believe they have one for camera lenses.
Great start. This was a nice shot for your first attempt.
Don Spencer

Chris,

Any relation to Dana Muscatello?

- Tim Hornbeck