I'm not an astrophotographer, but we (wife and I) tried our hand this evening.
Canon EOS R5, with Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 + Canon 2x teleconverter version iii. Severely cropped. But this is a single image. We did our best to eliminate blur. Lens mounted to gimbal mount on carbon fiber tripod with about 20 pounds hanging from center column hook. Camera in electronic shutter mode, and triggered by cellphone via bluetooth.
One of the best images I've seen for this event. What makes this stand out though is the fact that it's a single image and a very good one at that. I see lots of very awesome looking astro photo's but so many of those are obviously not single images and involve lots of "editing" which is fine. Just not my cup of tea. Very well done.
adittam wrote:
Damn, so cool!! I hope I get clear skies here in the next night or two!
What were your exposure settings?
They were odd. F/5.6 (which is wide open with the 2x converter), 1/15th, ISO 500. Manual mode because even 3 steps underexposed from what the camera tries to compute is way too bright for Jupiter. We were experimenting/learning on the fly. If I was doing it again I'd go to ISO 800 and speed up the exposure time the corresponding amount.
bobbytan wrote:
Pretty good! I thought Jupiter would be brighter, No?
Excellent eye. Yes, Jupiter is orders of magnitude brighter than Saturn. While this is a single exposure, I did have to use a radial filter on Jupiter and reduce exposure and highlight settings until I got the banding to show up as well as we could.
We took probably 30 shots. Many weren't sharp focus. Some were too bright and Jupiter was nothing but washed out. By the time I reduced exposure enough to get the best banding on Jupiter, Saturn almost disappeared in the shot. So this was the one with our best focus, bright enough to see Saturn decent, yet I could still recover detail in Jupiter. But yes, this is a single shot with no more work done in Lightroom than Ansel Adams could have done in a darkroom.
Bogino wrote:
One of the best images I've seen for this event. What makes this stand out though is the fact that it's a single image and a very good one at that. I see lots of very awesome looking astro photo's but so many of those are obviously not single images and involve lots of "editing" which is fine. Just not my cup of tea. Very well done.
Thank you. And see my detailed responses above. But yes - one single exposure with some electronic dodging and burning to even out Jupiter (much brighter) and Saturn (much dimmer) in order to catch them on one shot.
The real pain was focusing. 800mm = 16x. and we used live view zoomed in twice (which I think is 15X). So every time we so much as breathed the viewfinder would shake all over. Definitely some trial and error. Even walking near the tripod would cause visible shake at that level. So I set the camera to electronic shutter and triggered the camera by cellphone via bluetooth after we walked 20 foot away. We are in far south Arizona and blessed with very clear, dry skies (no haze to see through) and as a bonus the winds were dead calm.
