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Re: [OM] Astrophotography

Subject: Re: [OM] Astrophotography
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 16:26:03 -0400
What's DSS?

Chuck Norcutt


On 7/26/2014 3:15 PM, Piers Hemy wrote:
Pretty impressive for a first attempt, Paul. Or should that be 179th
attempt?

I'll take a look at DSS myself - at least I don't have to drive 30 minutes
to find dark sky.

I am very tempted to ask whether the OM-D is back focusing a wee bit :-)

Piers

-----Original Message-----
From: olympus
[mailto:olympus-bounces+piers.hemy=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Paul Braun
Sent: 26 July 2014 16:58
To: Olympus Group
Subject: [OM] Astrophotography

One of the corporate subcontractors brought in to help with the tech
nightmare being dumped on us turns out to actually be a nice guy, a fellow
photographer, and really into astrophotography.  He and I were talking, and
he was showing me some of the results he's gotten with a dslr and a 300mm,
using Deep Sky Stacker and shooting anywhere from
200-300 frames at a time.  He challenged me to try it the other night, so I
drove out about 30min East of here, found a rural driveway in the middle of
nowhere, set up the tripod and the E-M5 with the OM 100/2.8 and shot 179
frames (sadly, I realized that I forgot my cable release, so it was an
extreme annoyance to do so...)

You can shoot about 10 4-sec frames before you need to slightly reposition.
Also, after you shoot your "light frames" or actual image frames, then you
put the lens cap on and shoot roughly 50 "dark frames"
or "bias frames" which the software uses to detect sensor noise.

Then you dump 'em all into the software, click "go to work', and go do
something else for a while.

Since I didn't have my iPad with the gps-enabled sky watching app, I just
focused on two of the stars in the Big Dipper.  The image I got isn't
spectacular, but it is a start.  Once I get more comfortable with getting
better source images (I discovered that DSS can read DNG, so next time I'll
shoot RAW, import into LR as DNG, then ship 'em over to the Win7 box for
stacking (DSS is a Windows app.  Would like to find one that plays in
OSX-land).  I then saved the result out as TIFF, sent it back to the Mac,
imported into LR, and did some tweaking to bring out the dimmer stars.

I'll post one once I'm happy with the results.

Oh, what the hell.  We're famiily.  Here:
http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=13917

Enjoy.  I will try to find a nebula or other more exciting things next time.
By the way - anyone know offhand the hyperfocal point for that lens?

I also want to try a wide-field shot using the DZ 14-54 wide open, and it at
least has a focusing scale, unlike the MFT lenses...

--
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