Milky Way panorama with XT2

tradesmith45 wrote:

Astrophotographer 10 wrote:

I am thinking for simplicity, 5 minute images at ISO840 may be the go. Simpler to process and noise should not be an issue. I'll take a dark or two and subtract them in photoshop from the light images.

Haven't tried this w/ Fuji (yet?) but when I did it w/ the Oly, didn't like it too much. When a black stuck pixel gets subtracted, it leaves a white hole & the white hot pixels leave a black hole.

Oly's LENR does much better but still leaves plenty of noise.

I also tried using DXO Prime, Nik Define & projects NR to reduce LEN. Prime was much worse than the other 2 but LR & PS ACR did better than them all. Prime is the best for short exposure noise but in response to my email about LEN, they have no plans to address the problem - too sensor specific.

I did one here with an XE1 and 14mm with 15 minute exposures:

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/152153598

As you can see the image is a lot deeper. The dust lanes are more prominent and there is colour in the stars and other areas.

Greg.

Yes, this is a far cleaner & more detailed image - very pleasing. The older sensor will remain hard to beat for really long exposures & low light.

Yes I missed that blue haloing around brighter stars. That is an easy fix in Lightroom.

A bit of coma in the right corner now I check it out more thoroughly. Again either F4 or a bit of distortion slider in LR should handle that.

I have the Samyang 12 F2 ready to go and also a Nikon 14-24 and an adapter if it clears tonight to have another go.

I sorted the intervalometer (you have to add the interval time to the bulb time, otherwise the timer goes to 99 hours 99minutes and 59 seconds before the next shot!, Very disconcerting in the field in the dark to handle!). I set the interval to 3 seconds.

I am planning to take 5 minute exposures F2 ISO500 and see what that looks like and adjust it on the fly by changing ISO until I get a decent exposure then do another 8 images panorama and take some darks. Too bad LENR doesn't work like an astro camera. There it takes an autodark and holds it in memory and each new shot reuses that dark rather than a fresh one every shot. It would make LENR a lot more user friendly and useful - Fuji are you listening?

Also a built in exposure greater than 30 seconds would be awesome.

Greg.