Lunar Eclipse PICS with the EOS Ra, EOS R6 & EOS M6

MasterWayne wrote:

Marco, I have to say, you've absolutely nailed the art of milky way post processing. I absolutely love all of the MW pictures you've posted in the last years or so. Especially since you're using jpgs as a base.

I would be very interested in seeing the flat SOOC jpg you've mentioned!

Here you go!  Note that all the colors I've extracted are embedded in this JPEG - without a need to add anything.  There's a bit of light falloff at the edges that and I left the slight orange-yellow flare in place over Antares (the yellow star).  I used both slider controls in Photoshop and Lightroom with both a mouse and a pen. I probably could have cloned that flare over Antares right out without any trouble.  One of the techniques I use to squeeze out some contrast and saturation is to duplicate the original layer and then transform that duplicate to an "overlay" before fading it back.  Duplicating this process more than once will have a dramatic effect on the contrast and highlights.  'Auto-color' sometimes works but adjusting the Color Balance manually helps me remove any of the warmer hues from the background, changing the overall hue from yellow to blue. Individual stars can get their colors enhanced with the Saturation wand although it's very easy to go overboard (which I've done before).  Usually Antares generates a flare when shooting with a wide aperture with the EOS Ra and I tend to digitally correct this - but not this time since it wasn't too strong.   I did try cloning out the red glare around the moon but it just looked even more peculiar and artificial, hence I left it in.
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The "processed" JPEG posted earlier - Very slightly cropped at the edges

The original JPEG without edits.  Note the slight secondary flare reflection in the lower right region.

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Note that the moon (and the city of Sydney below frame) were producing so much light that the image was somewhat washed out.  Below is an example from last year when I took three simple JPEGs using a regular tripod.  You might be interested in that image too because it shows the three panels (JPEGS) without any edits to them.  Those colors in the Ophiuchus Complex (on the right) are quite clear.  With an unmodified camera, the blue hues around Ophiuchus Rho simply never seem to come out much.  I don't consider the "final" edited image to he suitably edited but these were just quick tests to see what the camera could capture.  When I figure out how to get better polar alignment with my motorized mount, I'll try stopping down the lenses used and will double my exposure times from 5 seconds to 10 or 15 seconds (unguided).  This should greatly improve detail and may allow me to stack images someday.  Might need a new computer setup for this though.
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3 unedited JPEGs prior to merging into a Panorama via the Photoshop [automate - "photomerge"] feature - showing the amount of color and detail captured without a moon in the sky.

Same image after a really basic color, contrast, hue, levels, saturation edit. I'd have altered the overall hue of this image if I was re-editing this today.

An image shown just after capture - taken with the EOS Ra + EF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens from a Rural sky location with a 10 second exposure - This older EF lens tends to produce a lot of purple fringing around the stars, something I'd like to try with the RF 50mmL lens some day.  But you can see how much color and what levels of detail were captured in this one JPEG.

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In the past and when using regular, non modified cameras, I've found some faint nebulous colors (eg Bernard's Loop) simply didn't show up at all.  But from the very first images i took with the EOS Ra, I was quite surprised at how much color and detail was captured.  It looks crisp on the LCD during playback but after downloading seems a little more washed out.  There's definitely a tendency to throw strong flares when bright light-sources are in frame ... but this can often be edited out without too much grief.  And dropping the aperture down seems to have a strong impact on these flares when they occur.
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I think it was noticed by reviewers around 2018 that Canon's image processors were embedding more data for Dynamic Range into the JPEGs than previously observed.  Newer cameras like the R5 and R6 have the new 10-Bit HEIF files available but I'd prefer to get a new computer & suitable monitor before I start dealing with those.  So far I'm not capturing images that I expect to print but I will likely shoot RAW in the near future for some of my Astro.
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Regards,
Marco Nero.