Posts Made By: Todd Leen

Chris,

That's an excellent shot. Cygnus is full of
wonderful stuff, and your exposure time is dead
on. Lots of deep stuff. One of my first good
shots was in Cygnus too. Keep it up!
(Steve's right, you've scanned it backwards ...)

Take the same lens/film/exposure combo and take
a shot of Casseopea and the Double Cluster in
Perseus -- there's lots of good NGCs there too!

Keep your results coming!

Cheers
Todd

Hi Tim,

My suggestions:

For the moon, look up exposure times in Covington's
book Astrophotography for Amateurs (or something like
that). Exposure for the moon depends strongly on
its phase and Covington's formulae work well in
my (limited) experience. Folks get better shots
of the moon and planets using a consumer digital
camera held up to (or clamped onto) the eyepiece.

For deep space, I use Elite-Chrome 200 - as do
many of us. See Jerry Lodriguss' web site for
specific exposure suggestions. At f/4 I use 45-60
minutes, at f/2.8 15-30min from dark sites. From
my light-polluted house, about 10min at f/2.8 is
max -- so I don't bother. I suggest stopping
your lens down 1-2 f stops from wide open to avoid
star images bloated by coma at the corners and edges.

Your star trails should look encouraging, but you
might try 1 hour or so at f/8 (again from
a dark site).

Slide film is nice since they can't ruin the
development (unless they run it through C-41
chemistry -- this HAS happened to me, lost a
whole 36 exposure roll of material).

Good luck, and show us the results!

Todd

Hi Marilyn,

With a normal lens on a 35mm camera mounted
on a tripod, anything more than about 30
seconds gives star trails. You may be more
constrained with the 80mm depending on final
display. See Jerry Lodriguss' web page

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/I06/I0602/I0602.HTM

To quote Jerry

Try shooting a series of exposures of 5, 10,
20 and 30 seconds. Generally, if you can see
a star or planet with your unaided eye, you
can photograph it on a fixed tripod
with an exposure of about 10 seconds at
f/2.8 with ISO 400 speed film.

All this suggests going to faster film. E200
works well, or faster as Jerry suggests.

If you have a wide angle lens for your Blad, that
may be a better bet. Also, if you stay nearer the
pole - Perseus, Casseopei - you can go longer.

As long as you're out, try some color star trails
too. On E200, 1-2 hours at f/8 is nice.

For the future, a good source on how long you can
shoot without trails is Covington's book
"Astrophotography for the Amateur". I suggest
you borrow a copy from the library and look up
his tables.

Don't forget to post your results! Good luck!

Cheers
Todd

Ivan,

Aftermarket lens caps are usually available
in lots of different sizes at most camera shops.

Todd

Maurice,

Hmm, I disagree with Steve, I think it's
overexposed.

There are concentric circles of
shading difference (visible when the brightness
and contrast are accentuated). I don't know what
that's from.

I did manage to improve it, but most of the stars
and the comet tail are buried in the background.
I didn't get ALL the color and intensity gradients
out, but am convinced it's do-able. I used various
masks in Photoshop, and curves.

Cheers
Todd

Mike,

That's pretty good nebulosity for 1 hour on
the FS102 without a reducer. Is this normal,
or push-processed?

Todd

Augie,

Lots of information on that slide! The one-stop
push really looks helpful, I'll have to try that.
Let us know when you post a larger version.

Thanks
Todd

Hi Taylor,

That's really pretty. I took the liberty
of bringing up the nebulosity a bit. You've
got quite a lot recorded. Nice image!

Todd

That's *really* nice -- are you using a
reducer is this a very long exposure.

Todd

very nice image -- ist the FS102 with a reducer/flattener,
is film 35mm?

Thanks
Todd