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Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

mdees88
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p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

I Just ordered a solar filter so I can attempt to shoot the solar eclipse next month. I think it is going to work well for that.

I would like to try and shoot some ISS transits of the sun in the future and I have a question. When using this solar filter my shutter speeds are quite slow (1/50s). I assume this a typical shutter speed when using a solar filter?

Won't I need a higher SS to get "sharp" images of the ISS? How are ya'll doing that, using ND filters instead. My solar filter is 16.5 stops. I would prefer to have a few less stops and get my shutter speed up around 1/1000-1/2000s and stop the aperture down a little for a sharper image. Thoughts?

Here is a test image I took of the sun....

Canon EOS R5 RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens 500mm f/8.0 1/50s 200 ISO 0.0 EV

Sep 21, 2023 at 06:55 AM

Lev Bass
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p.3 #2 · p.3 #2 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Yes, the shutter speed needs to be higher than 1/50. Here's a description of an ISS transit shoot with an R5 and RF100-500mm that includes some camera settings: https://pbase.com/kzaret/solar_transit_of_iss
Somehow the ISO ended up being 100. I'm guessing the filter was different.

Sep 21, 2023 at 09:16 AM

kirbic
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p.3 #3 · p.3 #3 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

The iOptron filter used in the linked pbase post is optical density 5.0, which is 15 stops. So it would seem he was underexposing quite a bit.
My M.O. is to use a 10-stop ND, which gives me a relatively fast shutter speed at apertures around f/8.

Sep 21, 2023 at 09:31 AM

mdees88
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p.3 #4 · p.3 #4 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Lev Bass wrote:
Yes, the shutter speed needs to be higher than 1/50. Here's a description of an ISS transit shoot with an R5 and RF100-500mm that includes some camera settings: https://pbase.com/kzaret/solar_transit_of_iss
Somehow the ISO ended up being 100. I'm guessing the filter was different.

---------------------------------------------

kirbic wrote:
The iOptron filter used in the linked pbase post is optical density 5.0, which is 15 stops. So it would seem he was underexposing quite a bit.
My M.O. is to use a 10-stop ND, which gives me a relatively fast shutter speed at apertures around f/8.

Thank you both. That was a nice article. I was able to find an 8"x12" sheet of Baader Astrosolar photo film with an optical density of 3.8 (the normal solar viewing safe film is 5.0). This is about 12.5 stops so it should allow much faster shutter speeds.

Sep 21, 2023 at 02:47 PM

mdees88
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p.3 #5 · p.3 #5 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

I just got back to sweet home AL about an hour ago. This is how my annular eclipse trip went.....

I drove 12 hours to Hondo, Texas and stayed at a hotel that was in the path of annularity. Clouds were going to be my biggest issue. Best I could tell they were supposed to blow over by 9am and the eclipse should start around 10:20. Well it wasn't looking good the morning of, so I drove an hour NW to Vanderpool, Texas. I got there at 9:15am and I was still covered up in clouds. Desperation was setting in. I drove another 45 minutes N and finally broke out of the clouds a little after 10.

I pulled over on the highway and in pure chaos mode, I managed to get everything setup 2 minutes before the action started. I used an R7, RF100-500 with a 1.4x extender. I placed it on a skywatcher sky adventurer GTI mount that I roughly polar aligned using a compass and offsetting for true north. The solar filter I used blocks a lot of light. I had to bump my ISO up to 640 just to get 1/10th of a second shutter speeds at F10. The wind was blowing strong too, so I was worried about blurry images.

My backup plan was to use my R5 and EF100-400 IS II + 1.4x iii extender. Two days before the eclipse, the astrosolar film I ordered over 3 weeks ago finally arrived. I made a DIY filter with the film but unfortunately, I had full cloud cover both days and I wasn't able to test it out. This film is optical density 3.8 compared to the standard viewing safe optical density 5.0. So, it's supposed to allow much faster shutter speeds.

After setting up the R7, I did some test shots with the R5 and I was able to shoot 1/6400th of second, F10, ISO 100. Thank goodness. I took images every 5 minutes and after shooting with the R7, I shot with the R5 handheld. Motion blur was an issue on the R7 but I took a lot of extra images at each interval.

As of right now I haven't even gone through the R7 images. I was blown away by the handheld R5 images and just finished editing them. This is the composite image I wanted to capture, inspired by Lighthound's image he posted in this thread (thanks for all the advice).

It's not perfect. My timing was slightly off due to changing locations, but all things considered I couldn't be happier. I almost skipped out on this eclipse, but now I'm so glad I went. MANY lessons were learned that I can use next April.

Matt

Canon EOS R5 EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM +1.4x III lens 560mm f/10.0 1/6400s 100 ISO 0.0 EV

Edited on Oct 16, 2023 at 01:38 AM · View previous versions

Oct 15, 2023 at 08:03 PM

stanj
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p.3 #6 · p.3 #6 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

My equatorial mount wasn't level, or the tripod sunk into the sand. Either way, it was drifting profusely, so I need to align the imagery first. Here's a still.

Canon EOS R5 RF800mm F11 IS STM + EXTENDER RF2x lens 1600mm f/22.0 1/200s 640 ISO 0.0 EV

Oct 15, 2023 at 08:58 PM

mdees88
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p.3 #7 · p.3 #7 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

stanj wrote:
My equatorial mount wasn't level, or the tripod sunk into the sand. Either way, it was drifting profusely, so I need to align the imagery first. Here's a still.

Great detail in the sunspots! My alignment was obviously not perfect, it drifted too. I shot at a 5-minute interval, and I was okay with 10 min between shots. By 15 minutes and it would be on a 1/3-1/4 from the edge. It was easy to realign with my phone, so I went ahead and centered it up every 5 minutes. I really liked using it over a tripod, even without a great alignment.

Oct 15, 2023 at 09:57 PM

stanj
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p.3 #8 · p.3 #8 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

mdees88 wrote:
Great detail in the sunspots! My alignment was obviously not perfect, it drifted too. I shot at a 5-minute interval, and I was okay with 10 min between shots. By 15 minutes and it would be on a 1/3-1/4 from the edge. It was easy to realign with my phone, so I went ahead and centered it up every 5 minutes. I really liked using it over a tripod, even without a great alignment.

I think my alignment was much worse than yours, then

I mean in this day and age, there should be automatic ways to align images like this, you'd think, because I can't be the only moron who practices solar setup for weeks (I had it down to 90 minute long observations with 1/2 frame drift) and then messes up when it really matters.

Canon EOS R5 RF800mm F11 IS STM + EXTENDER RF2x lens 1600mm f/22.0 1/200s 640 ISO 0.0 EV

Oct 16, 2023 at 07:14 AM

Jeff
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p.3 #9 · p.3 #9 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Haven't really finished processing, but here's my take. Captured from Moki Dugway, UT, a handful of miles from the temporary 'city' of Valley of the Gods. Man, there were so many people there on Thursday parked indiscriminately everywhere that I hope that gem of BLM land wasn't trashed, though I know that plenty of new 'parking spaces' were created. Hopefully someone will go in and rake them out so they are not considered permanent dispersed camping spots.

I'm so done with the 5Ds (mainly due to focusing at night; focusing for the eclipse was even worse!), the R5II can't come fast enough (while we still wait for a mirrorless 5Ds replacement).

Canon EOS 5DS EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens 200mm f/8.0 1/400s 100 ISO 0.0 EV

Oct 18, 2023 at 07:48 AM

stanj
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p.3 #10 · p.3 #10 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Very nice, Jeff. I had major misalignment on my tracker, that's what happens when you set up in daytime after driving 900 miles non-stop without sleep, I guess. It will take me a while to get the 4000 frames aligned, but here's PacMan from the other thread.

Canon EOS R5 RF800mm F11 IS STM + EXTENDER RF2x lens 1600mm f/22.0 1/200s 640 ISO 0.0 EV

iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 15 Pro Max back triple camera 6.86mm f/1.78 lens 7mm f/1.8 1/190s 80 ISO +0.7 EV

Edited on Oct 18, 2023 at 11:29 AM · View previous versions

Oct 18, 2023 at 09:13 AM

kirbic
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p.3 #11 · p.3 #11 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Beautiful results everyone!
I was not able to make a trip for this one, reserving that for next April :-)
Great to see the various set-ups used, and loving mdees88's results from the R5 and EF 100-400, that is the combination I will likely be using next April.

Oct 18, 2023 at 10:32 AM

mdees88
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p.3 #12 · p.3 #12 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Great images!

Here's an interesting thing I learned for future reference. During all the last minute chaos of trying drive out from under the clouds, I ended up 11 miles off of the center line of the eclipse. I was worried about how much of an effect it would have on my ring of fire shot. If you look, you can see there is more sun visible on the left than the right side of my image. It's more than enough to bug me but not enough that most people would notice.

So next time I go, I think I will set my max limit to 5 miles and anything under 3 miles will likely be unnoticeable. I don't imagine this will matter quite as much with a total eclipse compared to an annular.

Jeff wrote:
Haven't really finished processing, but here's my take. Captured from Moki Dugway, UT, a handful of miles from the temporary 'city' of Valley of the Gods. Man, there were so many people there on Thursday parked indiscriminately everywhere that I hope that gem of BLM land wasn't trashed, though I know that plenty of new 'parking spaces' were created. Hopefully someone will go in and rake them out so they are not considered permanent dispersed camping spots.

I'm so done with the 5Ds (mainly due to focusing at night; focusing for the eclipse was even worse!), the R5II can't come fast...Show more →

Jeff, I looked up Moki Dugway and it looks like it was right on the line. About how far off the centerline do you think you were? Your ring of fire looks perfectly centered up.

stanj wrote:
Very nice, Jeff. I had major misalignment on my tracker, that's what happens when you set up in daytime after driving 900 miles non-stop without sleep, I guess. It will take me a while to get the 4000 frames aligned, but here's PacMan from the other thread.

Stanj, that surface detail is incredible. I assume this is a stack?

I see you used Manual Focus. I guess you just focused on the sunspots then locked the focus. I assume you disabled auto power off and maybe only let the viewfinder and screen turn off? When my camera powers off it pulls focus some on my RF100-500.

I disabled my power off but was paranoid about losing focus at some point and then not having a sunspot visible to confirm my focus was good. So, I ended up shooting the whole thing with AF and I took 5, 3 shot bracketed exposures at each interval. The AF did a decent job but in hindsight I should have shot at least 3 times as many images. The AF was less reliable the closer I got to annularity.

I've been checking out the dedicated solar scopes lately and all the detail you get in the chromosphere from the Ha filters. I would have loved a shot of this ring of fire eclipse that showed the chromosphere and/or prominences. I might go down that rabbit hole someday...

kirbic wrote:
Beautiful results everyone!
I was not able to make a trip for this one, reserving that for next April :-)
Great to see the various set-ups used, and loving mdees88's results from the R5 and EF 100-400, that is the combination I will likely be using next April.

Thanks kirbic. I lucked out on this one and am grateful for the learning experiences. Shooting with the EF 100-400 was a last minute backup plan and I'm sure glad I brought it.

I definitely recommend picking up a sheet of the baader planetarium astrosolar photo film OD 3.8 (not OD 5.0) and making a DIY filter. It is NOT viewing safe but the super fast shutter speeds can eliminate numerous potential issues. Every image I posted was shot handheld...

Oct 18, 2023 at 12:23 PM

Jeff
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p.3 #13 · p.3 #13 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

stanj wrote:
Very nice, Jeff. I had major misalignment on my tracker, that's what happens when you set up in daytime after driving 900 miles non-stop without sleep, I guess. It will take me a while to get the 4000 frames aligned, but here's PacMan from the other thread.

Fantastic detail in the sun, Stan! Where did you go for it?

Oct 18, 2023 at 02:11 PM

Jeff
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p.3 #14 · p.3 #14 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

mdees88 wrote:
Jeff, I looked up Moki Dugway and it looks like it was right on the line. About how far off the centerline do you think you were? Your ring of fire looks perfectly centered up.

Was maybe 200-300 meters south of the centerline, close enough to not see any difference. I'm an idiot and didn't reset the camera to shoot more frequently during totality, so it was complete, dumb-assed luck that I got it centered (was shooting every 90 seconds). I had only 2 hours to pack for this trip, compared to the 1 day + 2 hours that I'd planned for. You guessed it, forgot some stuff, made some poor (downright asinine, actually) lens choices, and for the frosting on the cake, two hours before totality as I was doing the final placement of the camera this happened:

Oct 18, 2023 at 02:22 PM

stanj
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p.3 #15 · p.3 #15 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

mdees88 wrote:
Stanj, that surface detail is incredible. I assume this is a stack?

I see you used Manual Focus. I guess you just focused on the sunspots then locked the focus. I assume you disabled auto power off and maybe only let the viewfinder and screen turn off? When my camera powers off it pulls focus some on my RF100-500.

It is a single exposure, held constant through the whole 3h+ (through a 16.5 stop ND filter, under-exposed maybe 2 stops from where it would instinctively land). The image was processed in DXO PureRaw as always, to separate noise from solar texture, a bit of curves, and then quad-toned in PS.

Originally I wanted to shoot brackets, but there's a problem: My R3 can do bracketing in ES, the R5 can't. With a cable release you can set it to expose every x seconds and hold the shutter for a second, so the whole bracket gets executed, but my back yard experiments showed that I really don't want to have any mechanical parts rattling around at 1600mm. So I had the choice between an R7 and a 7-frame bracket, or R5 straight up. Because I'm a size queen I went with the R5, and used the R3 only for a short 500mm "stationary" clip of the maximum occlusion.

I was using the back LCD the whole time and kept it alive so that I can see how well (or rather, badly) the tracker was tracking so that I could adjust as needed. It took two full batteries for the 3h.

Oct 18, 2023 at 02:27 PM

stanj
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p.3 #16 · p.3 #16 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Jeff wrote:
Fantastic detail in the sun, Stan! Where did you go for it?

Monument valley, a casual 900 mile drive, each way

iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 15 Pro Max back triple camera 2.22mm f/2.2 lens 2mm f/2.2 1/35s 1250 ISO +0.7 EV

Oct 18, 2023 at 02:27 PM

Jeff
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p.3 #17 · p.3 #17 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Jeff wrote:
Fantastic detail in the sun, Stan! Where did you go for it?

stanj wrote:
Monument valley, a casual 900 mile drive, each way

I had a booking for Battle Mountain, but saw the weather forecast and went for the next best location. Insanity. I was about 10 miles off centerline, and you can tell (GPS should be embedded in the photo.)

Not too terribly far from where I was! I was wondering what it would be like down there (not necessarily a lot of parking), and I heard they might close it to public traffic beforehand.

Super-impressed with the detail in your image; you say you only used a 16-stop ND, not a solar filter?

Oct 18, 2023 at 02:49 PM

stanj
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p.3 #18 · p.3 #18 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

Jeff wrote:
Not too terribly far from where I was! I was wondering what it would be like down there (not necessarily a lot of parking), and I heard they might close it to public traffic beforehand.

Yes, I heard about the closures as well, which is why I went to Mexican Hat at first (arrived around 3am). There I stayed until daybreak, took a nap, and saw a complete zoo. I went back west in search of a foreground. Found none, so I pulled over where there was at that time still ample parking. I may as well just have stayed at Mexican Hat, at the centerline. Oh well.

Super-impressed with the detail in your image; you say you only used a 16-stop ND, not a solar filter?

Look, obviously I have no idea what I'm doing or talking about, at least not when it comes to astro photography

I chose my lens, read the filter size on the lens cap, went to eBay and ordered something that can be delivered in time, that seemed dark enough

I have a couple of "normal" 10 and 15 stop filters but they are only 82mm, I needed 95mm. I just crossed my fingers.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195972747372

I'm not around 4/8 so the next time I get to try it out is some 5 years in the future in Australia.

Oct 18, 2023 at 03:17 PM

Jeff
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p.3 #19 · p.3 #19 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

stanj wrote:
Yes, I heard about the closures as well, which is why I went to Mexican Hat at first (arrived around 3am). There I stayed until daybreak, took a nap, and saw a complete zoo. I went back west in search of a foreground. Found none, so I pulled over where there was at that time still ample parking. I may as well just have stayed at Mexican Hat, at the centerline. Oh well.
Look, obviously I have no idea what I'm doing or talking about, at least not when it comes to astro photography

I chose my lens, read the...Show more →

Well, you done good for not knowing what you're doing!

Oct 18, 2023 at 06:41 PM

d4mike
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p.3 #20 · p.3 #20 · Canon Astro/Nightscape/Lightning Image Thread

A buddy and I camped out in Capitol Reef and the Temple of the Sun, the night before the Ring of Fire. It was pretty cold but clear in the morning.
The fun part of being out there was the atmosphere of all the people. Of course as soon as the Ring appeared people cheered and then many broke out with Ring of Fire by ol' Johnny. Then people behind us started cheering, we turned and we witnessed a proposal so my buddy and I started signing A Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Great time! Full disclosure, my daughter helped me with the composite, PS still baffles me!

Oct 19, 2023 at 09:35 AM

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