ASTRO: Nikon D200.....Another first light image

Southern Milky Way from Gates Co. NC, USA
Camera mounted piggyback on Losmandy G-11
No filter
50mm f/1.8 Nikkor D lens stopped to f/5.6
23 minute guided exposure/ISO 500
PP done in Photoshop. Uncropped, as was the last image
that I posted.

Scott
--
Preston S Justis
Astrophotography home page:
http://mysite.verizon.net/psjustis/
++++++++++++++++++++++

Preston S Justis wrote:

Southern Milky Way from Gates Co. NC, USA
Camera mounted piggyback on Losmandy G-11
No filter
50mm f/1.8 Nikkor D lens stopped to f/5.6
23 minute guided exposure/ISO 500
PP done in Photoshop. Uncropped, as was the last image
that I posted.

Scott
--
Preston S Justis
Astrophotography home page:
http://mysite.verizon.net/psjustis/
++++++++++++++++++++++

Lots of M and B objects there!

Just one frame of 23 minutes or many stacked shorter ones. If one that
camera is low noise. Does it take a dark frame for noise reduction?

What caused the yellow at the bottom left, a light?

That lens does give really nice stars. See a couple hot pixels but not
many at all.

Rick


--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Scott, I'm surprised how well the HII regions are seen in your pictures. I'd
really like to know if the D200 is more sensitive to Halpha than the Canon
cameras...

Stefan

"Preston S Justis" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:TWyWh.628$A72.316@trnddc07...
Southern Milky Way from Gates Co. NC, USA
Camera mounted piggyback on Losmandy G-11
No filter
50mm f/1.8 Nikkor D lens stopped to f/5.6
23 minute guided exposure/ISO 500
PP done in Photoshop. Uncropped, as was the last image
that I posted.

Scott
--
Preston S Justis
Astrophotography home page:
http://mysite.verizon.net/psjustis/
++++++++++++++++++++++

"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
...


Preston S Justis wrote:

Southern Milky Way from Gates Co. NC, USA
Camera mounted piggyback on Losmandy G-11
No filter
50mm f/1.8 Nikkor D lens stopped to f/5.6
23 minute guided exposure/ISO 500
PP done in Photoshop. Uncropped, as was the last image
that I posted.

Scott
--
Preston S Justis
Astrophotography home page:
http://mysite.verizon.net/psjustis/
++++++++++++++++++++++

Lots of M and B objects there!

Just one frame of 23 minutes or many stacked shorter ones. If one that
camera is low noise. Does it take a dark frame for noise reduction?

That is one frame. The camera has a setting that is called 'long exposure
noise reduction'.
Exposures of 8 seconds or longer can take advantage of this feature. I don't
know if
it takes dark frames or not. The noise reduction routine does take awhile to
run after each exposure. If I remember correctly it took from 5-10 minutes.
You have to let it
finish before you can open the shutter again.

As with any digital camera, using the 'bulb' setting will drain the battery
pretty quick.


What caused the yellow at the bottom left, a light?

There was a tree limb or the corner of a barn protruding into that section
of the frame. I did a quick and dirty photoshop job on it with the lasso
tool
and curves adjustment to lighten up that edge.


That lens does give really nice stars. See a couple hot pixels but not
many at all.

There are quite a number of stars and it's hard to pick out the hot pixels
with all of the star images. I've had that lens on one of my film bodies
for 20 years and this is the first time I've used it to shoot the sky.

The Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D is a really good performer and a good used
one can be had for a modest price.

Scott

"Stefan Lilge" wrote in message
...
Scott, I'm surprised how well the HII regions are seen in your pictures.
I'd
really like to know if the D200 is more sensitive to Halpha than the Canon
cameras...

Stefan

Believe it or not, there was quite a bit of skyglow that night. The
originals
were great, but kind of washed out. It didn't take long to process the
images
and I was surprised at the amount of HII I recorded.

My friend had his Canon Rebel XTi and he was bragging about how well
it recorded red nebulosity. He was using a Lumicon Deep Sky filter with
an Orion 80mm ED refractor. The images were impressive, but slightly noisy
as he was using ISO of 1600. The XTi is a very nice camera IMO.

The Canon has a noise reduction feature as well. It didn't take nearly as
long to
run as my D200. (read my reply to Rick)

We are going to try the D200 on his 80mm ED with the same filter and see how
things
go. I have to get another 2" camera adapter with 48mm threads to accept
filters.
I sold my old one thinking that I wasn't going to use it anymore!

Scott

"Preston S Justis" wrote


.......
That is one frame. The camera has a setting that is called 'long exposure
noise reduction'.
Exposures of 8 seconds or longer can take advantage of this feature. I
don't
know if
it takes dark frames or not. The noise reduction routine does take awhile
to
run after each exposure. If I remember correctly it took from 5-10
minutes.
You have to let it
finish before you can open the shutter again.........


There ya go! This Nikon DSLR has been written up in the photo rags for
having great noise reduction features and I bet that it kills off the hot
pixels. I'd still go with a series of shorter exposures just in case a wind
gust or something comes out of the night to mess up the exposure. I wonder
if the camera will do it's 'noise reduction' on a saved file??

George N

"George Normandin" wrote in message
...
"Preston S Justis" wrote


......
That is one frame. The camera has a setting that is called 'long
exposure
noise reduction'.
Exposures of 8 seconds or longer can take advantage of this feature. I
don't
know if
it takes dark frames or not. The noise reduction routine does take
awhile
to
run after each exposure. If I remember correctly it took from 5-10
minutes.
You have to let it
finish before you can open the shutter again.........


There ya go! This Nikon DSLR has been written up in the photo rags for
having great noise reduction features and I bet that it kills off the hot
pixels. I'd still go with a series of shorter exposures just in case a
wind
gust or something comes out of the night to mess up the exposure. I wonder
if the camera will do it's 'noise reduction' on a saved file??

I don't know if it will. It runs right after you take the image. I was
shooting RAW+Hi res. jpeg.
I forgot to mention that I was shooting in color mode 1 which enhances the
reds in the image.

There are three modes with 2 being a nuetral (balanced) color and 3 being a
blue/green enhanced.

I bought this camera to do macro and telephoto photograhy of daylight
subjects and thought I'd try it out on some deep sky imaging. I'm very
pleased with what I'm seeing so far.

Scott


George N