Posts Made By: Eddie Casey

Hi Doug, here at 54N we are no strangers to aurora but last nights display is the best I've ever seen. I banged off a couple of shots with the digicam which hardley do it justice. I managed to get a few of the blue curtains as they crossed castor in the twins. There were lovely green curtains over the plough for much of the night.

Cheers, Eddie.

Jeremy, this is unfortunatly the biggest problem. The trouble with the big mass developers is that astro shots will appear essentially as unexposed. Thats in effect what a stella shot is, lots of black unexposed film and maybe a few exposed points of interest. If you are using mail order, yes you could ring them and tell them what is on the film. Some companies will do the prints manually with this in mind but change for the privilige. You could seek out a small local photo developer. Many astrophotographers do this and build up rapport. Remember that the negatives you have could still be re-processed, they may render some good shots even though the autosystem rejected them. Have you held them up to the ligh to see if any of the shots look OK, try a magnifying glass. Maybe some of the planetary shots turned out OK.

Another solution is to use slide film. This dispenses with the need to verify a negative for printing. Theres little a developer has to do save for dunking the film in the right chemicals. If you are in the UK I can point you to a good developer, I'd be no use stateside though.

Hope this helps

Cheers, Eddie.

Hi Steve, as a matter of interest what operating system are you using? I loaded up the toucam on my laptop with no probs whatsoever under winXP. It wasn't until a while later that I tried it out on my desktop which had win98 that I found I couldn't get it to work at all. I know it works fine under win98 as a great many use it but I tried everything, believe me. In the end I upgraded to XP and it fired up with no problems.

beautiful wes, if your deepsky prove as good as the planetary images you have produced we are all in for a treat!!

Clear skies.

Eddie.

Great shot Andrew, I prefer to see many DSO's in a wide field setting, gives them a 3D feel in some way as Lance says.

Thanks for letting us see the image.

Eddie.

Stunning Wes!

Ed.

Nice shot Joe, had the chance to observe the full transit here in the UK but as always the clouds rolled in!

Ed

Looks like dif rings to me Jose. Beautiful shot by the way, love those wide field images!

Thanks for sharing.

Ed.

Nice shot Mihail, picked up the GRS very well.

Ed

Yes Randy, but the whole article is rather positive isn't it?

Ed.