| Moderated by: chrisbet, | Page:   ... 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12   |
|
|||||||
| Night Sky Photography - Page 9 | |
| An Equatorial Mount: My lucky day! | Rate Topic |
| Author | Post |
|---|
| Posted: Sun Apr 21st, 2019 15:39 |
|
81st Post |
jk
|
Well how about this for temptation? https://nikonrumors.com/2019/04/19/new-eagle-core-device-for-astrophotography-with-the-nikon-z6-and-z7-and-dslr-cameras.aspx/
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Sun Apr 21st, 2019 17:45 |
|
82nd Post |
Robert
|
Wow! What a rig... Looks expensive. 
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Mon Aug 26th, 2019 12:37 |
|
83rd Post |
Robert
|
Well, with feet back on the ground after that amazing link JK provided, I went out last night, first time this season. A slim waning Moon and a warm night was pretty promising. Armed with coffee and some munchies Christopher and I went up to my favourite local vantage point to see what we could get. I left the astro mount at home, just hoping for a few simple shots of the Milky Way. As we pulled up at the top of the hill I was dismayed to find a very large camper-van, awning and tents taking up most of the parking area, the rest of the locality was taken up by hundreds of sheep. They were the laziest, most stubborn sheep I have ever seen. I had to bump into them to get them to move, they were completely blocking the road, usually they scamper off but not this lot. I decided to move on to an alternative location, I didn't want them knocking the tripod over. Birker fell wasn't too far away so we made our way there. No sheep but lots of cars driving by, at least for the first 10 minutes after I started taking pictures, Birker fell seems an OK place, about the same travel distance from home as Stickle Pike with possibility of less light pollution, despite being slightly closer to Sellafield. After about 20 minutes the sky started clouding in, at 30 minutes it was total cover so I wrapped up and we headed home. I used the D800 and 16mm f/2.8 fisheye, pointed straight up at the Milky Way which was overhead and visually very clear. I have looked at the results, there were only about 15 usable exposures but they have quite long trails, the exposures were for 30 seconds, ISO1600, f/4. They didn't stack well and so I haven't done anything with them. I think this is about the first time I have used the 16mm on the D800 so I wasn't sure what to expect. Another clear and almost Moon free night is forecast for tonight so I am planning to go out again, this time on my own. Charging the astro mount battery as I type...
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Mon Aug 26th, 2019 13:05 |
|
84th Post |
jk
|
Looking forward to seeing some more results from your mount. Longer nights are coming and hopefully less numbers of holidaymakers in the high places.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Mon Aug 26th, 2019 15:22 |
|
85th Post |
Robert
|
Yes indeed and fewer dumbhead sheep! LOL I am using 'Clear outside'... https://clearoutside.com/forecast/ It seems pretty good, takes a little getting used to, the app allows you to store locations, the Mac software doesn't seem to allow that. Not always 100% right all the time but the weather is a rather inexact science. If I get anything worth sharing I will post it. I'm now running Mojave on the iMac and the Mac Pro, just now Google Earth locked my iMac up, reporting incompatibilities with the OS and also a notice saying that future updates of the OS will render Google Earth inoperative. That's a minor disaster, I use Google Earth a lot. Presumably I will still be able to run it on the Mac Pro but I use it for so many things besides photography. Is there any (viable) alternative?
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Mon Aug 26th, 2019 21:08 |
|
86th Post |
Robert
|
Much better this time. I found setting the astro mount up a bit daunting but once set up the world stopped turning, for my camera at least. Nothing spectacular by way of images, I took about 16 I think but I have been experimenting with the MC-36 and longer exposures. It works very well. The Astro mount worked well stoping star trails, the MC-36 worked well providing long exposures. Will post some later this morning, it's a bit late now.
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Tue Aug 27th, 2019 10:59 |
|
87th Post |
Robert
|
OK, gradually getting this together. Here are the images. This was taken setting up the Equatorial Mount, need to level it and align with Polaris. The only item of gear I forgot was my little level. The iPhone did that perfectly well. As I was doing my first test exposures a car came from the South, behind me. At that point any cars approaching from the South light up my position for quite a long time, at least a couple of minutes. All these images were taken with the D800 on my Equatorial Mount using the 16mm f/2.8 ais fisheye. This was @ f/4.0 for 30 seconds, ISO1600. you can see the shadow of the tripod and a slightly ghostly shadow of me on the weatherbeaten grass.  This was taken @ f/5.6, 120 seconds, ISO1250. Graham may be interested because the signpost is directing the traveller to Eskdale 3 Miles away.  Longer exposure of 240 seconds, a flash of my head lamp on the signpost reveals the text better, again f/5.6 and ISO1250.  Ambient lighting here, f/5.6, 240 seconds, ISO 1250  The next image was caught by my red head lamp, 180 seconds, f/5.6, ISO1250.  Finally, 480 seconds @ f5.6 ISO 1250 but with the Astro Mount motor turned off.  I took one exposure at f/8.0 but it wasn't much good because it was contaminated by my torch and a passing cars headlamps, but it was pretty sharp @ f/8.0 so I may try that again. This is the location, I was in the Southern corner of the crossroads, the Lat-Long are of my camera position. 
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Wed Aug 28th, 2019 07:22 |
|
88th Post |
Robert
|
jk wrote:Nice mount. Just reviewing the thread, I had clean forgotten this post. Many thanks JK, that is a perfect solution. One of the snags I have encountered has been that I have been using a 12 Volt lead acid golf trolley battery which is heavy, somewhat fragile and not particularly easy to connect onto, requiring spanner and screwdriver to connect the wires. I don't like the idea of having a powerful battery with loose trailing wires which are live. A recipe for fire. I will make up a lead for the purpose. It's an XLR plug which avoids the possibility of connecting anything other than suitable into the power pack. As for the illuminator I found a cheap copy Chinese illuminator off of eBay which fits perfectly and does the job nicely. It's only needed at set-up so then it's put away in the box. The button battery last for ages, provided I remember to turn it off, it's one of those devices which would benefit with an auto off circuit.
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Wed Aug 28th, 2019 17:45 |
|
89th Post |
Graham Whistler
|
Very dramatic Robert, you have good clear sky with little light polution compared with our part of the country.
____________________ Graham Whistler |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Wed Aug 28th, 2019 19:17 |
|
90th Post |
Robert
|
Thanks Graham. So densely populated it can't avoid the light pollution, it's reasonable here but could be better. I think Haverigg prison must have gone for LED floodlights because there doesn't seem as much glare from that quarter now. Sellafield, to the North West is probably the worst offender. To get really dark skies Kielder is probably our nearest but that's at least 135 miles, each way... I really want to get up into the North West of Scotland but the weather up there is so unpredictable and it's such a long haul that the chances are slim. I have just returned from a fruitless outing, the clouds closed in so quickly that I only had a fleeting glance of a clear sky, probably the last chance for a few days.
____________________ Robert. |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| This is topic ID = 1677 Current time is 09:58 | Page: ... 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | |
| Nikon DSLR Forums > Photography > Photography Projects > Night Sky Photography | Top | |
Users viewing this topic |
||
Current theme is Modern editor
| A small amount of member data is captured and held in an attempt to reduce spammers and to manage users. This site also uses cookies to ensure ease of use. In order to comply with new DPR regulations you are required to agree/disagree with this process. If you do not agree then please email the Admins using info@nikondslr.uk Thank you. |
Hosted by Octarine Services
UltraBB 1.173 Copyright © 2008-2025 Data 1 Systems
Page processed in 0.0735 seconds (71% database + 29% PHP). 81 queries executed.
UltraBB 1.173 Copyright © 2008-2025 Data 1 Systems
Page processed in 0.0735 seconds (71% database + 29% PHP). 81 queries executed.