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R6 - for Astrophotography? Yup. (PICS) Locked

Started Sep 7, 2020 | Discussions thread
This thread is locked.
Marco Nero
OP Marco Nero Veteran Member • Posts: 7,582
Re: R6 Astro images - editing - (PICS)

Eddie Rizk wrote:

Outstanding, as usual.

No stacking, no tracking, no bizarre specialized software? Really? I'm going to go find a dark spot to shoot some astro.

I just got around to editing one of those images a little more (see below).  It's not perfect but I was simply curious to see what could be done with it.  I'm not sure why the skies were so washed out last night but I think I was shooting too close to both sunset and moonrise combined with city lights and people burning wood in their mountain-lodge fireplaces.
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EOS R6 + RF 95mm f/1.2L USM lens
Original JPEG image  - straight out of the R6 camera.

EOS R6 + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens
After editing (Lightroom + Photoshop).  No additional colors or structures were added.

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Last night was just a tripod - and a baseball cap with LED lights in it... and the 2-second self timer to prevent tripod vibration. This is also what most people will be using with their R6. The software I used to edit the images was Lightroom with some further editing and resizing in Photoshop.  I edited these two images this afternoon.
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Editing
The process I used was to adjust levels and saturation in Lightroom, reduce color noise very slightly... no sharpening was applied...  and the file was then exported to Photoshop as a 16-Bit Tiff to ensure no further image degradation occurred. I rarely do this.  Normally I leave the images as 8-Bit files.  Then I adjusted color balance, contrast, levels, curves and selectively re-saturated specific areas. Dust lanes were enhanced manually along with luminous backlit regions. Careful comparisons were made with the original file to ensure the structure remained the same.  I then layered the edited file back into the original JPEG image.   Image was then reduced in size to 3,000 pixels wide... and then converted to 8-Bit before saving as a JPEG.
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EOS R6 + EF 24mmL lens - Original unedited JPEG from the camera (resized to 3000p)

EOS R6 + EF 24mmL lens - Edited image.
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The images BELOW are not of the EOS R6 but show the EOS Ra.
Still waiting to use my tracking mount.
I have assembled an equipment platform to enable me to track the sky efficiently using a Celestron EQ mount. But I don't yet have a battery to power the system just yet. As the weather warms up and Celestron release the battery I need (currently out of stock), I'll get around to calibrating it and using it to enable me to use smaller apertures with longer exposures. I probably won't need to use the EOS R6 on it since I have the EOS Ra for this specific purpose.
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EOS Ra on a Celestron CGX EQ mount... still waiting for a power supply to run it.
Hopefully I'll get to use the Ra on this next month with longer lenses.

EOS Ra on the mount's saddle plate.

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Regards,
Marco Nero.

 Marco Nero's gear list:Marco Nero's gear list
Canon EOS M6 Canon EOS Ra Canon EOS R6 Canon EF-M 32mm F1.4 Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM +20 more
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