New toys & vacations

[CauseISaidSo]

MUCH higher ISOs, open the aperture up, keep exposure times to just below “star trailing.”

I’ll give that a try. I think the last time I shot meteors I set the ISO fairly low; the 30D starts getting noisy above 800. Star trailing is going to start about 30 secs, right?

[chupathingie]

Shoot darks, as well. 10-15 of them at least. Averaged together, they subtract off all your hot pixels and a lot of the thermal noise. Your shots will be much, much cleaner.

[ravnostic]

Shoot darks, as well. 10-15 of them at least. Averaged together, they subtract off all your hot pixels and a lot of the thermal noise. Your shots will be much, much cleaner.

This. I didn’t get any Persies last night from the garagetop at work on my breaks–way to much light pollution, and pollution in general. In an effort to prevent a total fail, I went for the moon, Venus, And Jupiter. Pretty much failed, there, too. But I can use it to show what darks do for noise, so maybe it can at least be instructive. Best 36 of 68 ‘lights’, stacked against 12 ‘darks’, 5 second exposures, ISO 3200 Canon T2i f/7 (I should have opened further, but with the kit lens, things are sharper at 7 than 3.5) I stacked Raws converted to Tiffs at 1/2 resolution prior to stacking.

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2012/aug/11/p1stack1.jpg

More or less the same crop, from a single Tiff:

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2012/aug/11/p1light001.jpg

//off to my sucky night shift job now…

[caradoc]

(Clicky to embiggen)

[CauseISaidSo]

Clouds came in Saturday night just in time to give us a little cooling and much needed (although still way too little) rain Sunday morning, so I’ll have to save these tips for the next show.

[chupathingie]

doc, that’s gorgeous!

[caradoc]

I did just a little post on it. How’s this?

[chupathingie]

Stunning. I’m a geek, and I like the first better. This is the showpiece, the first is the art.

[caradoc]

Stunning. I’m a geek, and I like the first better. This is the showpiece, the first is the art.

So do I. Wife asked me if I could “Disneyfy” it a little bit. She likes the latter. I like the former…

[lokisbong]

I much prefer the less disneyfied version! awesome stuff!

[Pickerel]

So you picked up the 8-15 eh? Such a curious little (okay maybe not little) lens, but the versatility of circular and regular fisheye in one lens is pretty cool. Fisheye complements the curves in “The Bean” very well.

[ravnostic]

Ah, caradoc, I’m completely envious of that shot. I’ve been through the files and found I caught another one, but it’s very faint and small.

The only ‘glorious’ one isn’t really that cool; it’s just a starfield (Great square of Pegasus to be exact), but I sure was happy to get one after nearly 1000 images over 3 days! I really need to get me some wider glass. 20 second exposure, f/3.5, 29mm equiv (18-55mm kit as wide as she’ll go.) At full res there’s some nice color to it, but then there’s also a lot of noise.

I was wondering, Caradoc, do you think a meteor would trigger the lightning triggers? That would be SO much easier, though it would miss the start of them.

[caradoc]

It might, but I really doubt it – and unless you’ve got the sensor potted in the viewfinder, it’s still going to trigger for meteors out of frame.

Doesn’t seem to be all that useful, much like a lightning trigger at night for lightning.

[orionid]

I haven’t been completely through my memory card yet, but I’m not holding my breath. We were battling clouds all night, my fisheye just didn’t want to play, and the 24mm just wasn’t wide enough.

[fluffybunny]

I was wondering, Caradoc, do you think a meteor would trigger the lightning triggers? That would be SO much easier, though it would miss the start of them.

I am not a caradoc, nor do I play one on TV but AFAIK the best way to detect meteors is using their RF signal:

http://www.singularsci.com/MeteorDetector.htm

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