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Posts Made By: Jeff Hapeman

May 26, 2005 02:38 AM Forum: Insects - Flowers and Other Small Stuff - Photos

Lily-leaved Twayblade Orchid

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
I found these orchids growing in the scrub field behind our house. I haven't seen any in a few years. This is atypical blossom; typically they are much darker reddish-purple. I went with the maximum DOF I could get here, and the macro lens was set at about 2x life-size. I used a ring-flash to get adequate illumination

May 26, 2005 03:47 AM Forum: Insects - Flowers and Other Small Stuff - Photos

Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchid

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
Far from my best image...but it was windy, and I couldn't stop down to get better DOF. The shade made it dim...not the best conditions. Still, always great to see this orchid.

Jeff

June 1, 2005 02:09 AM Forum: Birding Optics and Photos

Mourning Warbler

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
If you know this bird...you would know how excited I was to not only see it, but also get such a great photo. Not that I didn't work for it--I spent about six hours over three days carefully stalking this bird around what appears to be his breeding territory--a very small boggy, brushy area near our lake home in northern WI. Mourning Warblers spend most of their time skulking around in heavy underbrush, but the male pops up into high trees to sing. On the way between the ground and the treetop, he normally stopped for a few seconds to sing once or twice on a lower limb in the brush. That was when I could grab a quick image. I used a fill flash with a Better Beamer and set the flash to -1/3EV to reduce the harsh lighting when shooting so close, and set the camera to +2/3EV to compensate for the strong backlighting and the darker portions of the bird.

All I did to edit this image was crop, apply a slight resharpen, and then downsize 66% for the web. This is one of those rare images that just comes out of the camera looking great.

I hope you enjoy this is as much as I have!

Jeff

June 5, 2005 01:25 AM Forum: Birding Optics and Photos

Magnolia Warbler

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
This is another image from my trip to our lake home over the Memorial Day weekend. I had wrapped up my imaging for the day--or so I thought--when I came upon this little Magnolia Warbler along the trail. He was so close that I had to back up to get him in focus. The IS on the 500mm lens works very well; this image was taken at 1/60s at 700mm (I was using the 1.4x TC).

June 18, 2005 02:45 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Summer Milky Way

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
This is a stack of two 30-second images taken with my Canon 1Ds Mark II and the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM lens wide open, unguided and just on a tripod. The images were registered with Registar and combined in Photoshop. I intended to take a series of 12 images, but I messed up the timer settings, and only got these two. Amazingly, these were taken at ISO 3200, which is very sensitive but has surprisingly little noise.

Jeff

June 20, 2005 03:09 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Deep Milky Way Wide-field Image

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
OK, last night I stayed up late to catch optimum darkness. This is a stack of 45 20-second images shot at ISO 3200 with my Canon 1Ds Mark II and a Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM @ f/2. The images were aligned and combined with Registar; without that program I never could have done this, as there was significant field rotation over the roughly 40 minutes it took to take these images. I brought it into Photoshop CS2 for final adjustments; I know the one star cloud is a bit bright, but I wanted to show the full milky way into Cygnus. If you look closely, you can see the NA nebula at the top of the image.

Did I mention that my skies are very dark at our place in northern WI grin ?

Jeff

July 2, 2005 10:02 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Summer Milky Way Redux

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
Back up north, this time with a workding Takahashi Teegul Star Patrol II. Cute little mount, but sort of a bear to even roughly polar-align. Regardless, I did get one good 5-minute exposure off before the lens dewed up. I need to get a little Kendrick heater for this set-up. Taken with a Canon 1Ds Mark II, 24mm EF f/1.4L USM lens at f/4, ISO at 1600. Hope you enjoy it. I wanted to take several and stack them, but there were mechanical challenges.

Jeff

July 31, 2005 06:00 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

The Milky Way and North America Nebula

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
More messing around with my Canon 1Ds Mark II and the little Takahashi Teegul Star Patrol II mount. Polar aligment is a bit imprecise, but the mount tracks very well. I was too lazy to drift align with photos (and had no scope to align), so I just went with 2.3-minute exposures, which showed only minor trailing of a few pixels, not visible on this image. This is a combination of 12 images, for a total exposure time of 30 minutes, using a 135mm f/2L lens wide open. It has very good sharpness from edge to edge. There was no noise reduction performed on this image; the images were shot at ISO 800, and combining 12 of them eliminated the noise.

My only wish was that this camera were more red-sensitive....

Jeff

August 6, 2005 06:13 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Another North America Nebula (huge and wide)

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
Last night I couldn't resist the urge to start a mosaic of the North America nebula region of Cygnus using my FSQ and STL-11000XM. This combo has a huge FOV, so it's a lot of fun to play with. This is a combination of 6 20-minute exposures with an Astronomik 10nm Ha filter. Enjoy!

The full-sized image (with some jpeg artifacts, I am afraid) can be found here:

http://www.pbase.com/jhapeman/image/47278983

Jeff

August 15, 2005 03:50 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

North America Region Mosaic

Posted By Jeff Hapeman
Looks like I won't get to work on this any further for a little bit between my vacation and weather, but I have all fall to finish it up. I am working on what I hope to be about a 12-pane mosaic of the North America Nebula/Central Cygnus region of the Milky Way in Ha. There is tons of great nebulosity in that region, so it should be fun. The sub-frames are all 2 hours in duration. I have three at the moment. I rotated the camera in between frames 1 and then 2-3, so it added a little twist.

The full-sized version can be seen here: http://www.pbase.com/jhapeman/image/47358464; click on the link for "Original" size.

Jeff

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