Great video I am still new to AP and got pixinsight a while ago. You used a lot of features I have not seen before really cool and don't worry your explanations are spot on. Not to long winded but having all the important info. Would love to see all 3 pictures of the series next to each other btw
I talked on the last video about how Siril would be good for me since I struggle with white balance, just wanted to let you know that I got the best, most accurate result so far by far when I ended up trying out Siril. Only big problem was that I ended up using up a TON of hard drive space in stacking 1500 of the files I had, if I tried to stack more I started running into issues with running low on space on an empty 1TB hard drive... Hope I can get a star tracker sometime in the future to mitigate that issue. These videos are super helpful for people who want to get started on deep-sky astrophotography on a budget, thanks for making them!
Ah, yes. I think I ran into that problem as well actually, so *secret*: I only stacked about 450/1000 for my Siril video. What's weird is that I didn't run out of space with PI stacking 1000, what's the difference?
@@NebulaPhotos Seems like Siril's a bit wonky in that respect, then. Next image I'm hoping on doing a super wide-field image that I can get some larger nebulae in, and get longer exposures with a wide-angle lens. Just gotta wait for the moon to get out of the way. Again, thanks for doing these, I would have little to no idea how much you could do without expensive equipment without them.
Hey, thanks SO much for this. I've been futzing around with astrophotography for a little while now but recently made the jump to getting an ASI294 and autoguiding. Took me a while figuring it all out (lord it was fun!) and when I did I still had to figure out post processing. I followed the lightvortex academy to get all my captures together into a final image and then used this video for the processing of that image. Results were amazing, so thank you very much. One note: I could not get the photometric color calibration to succeed IF I'd already rotated the image 180. But if I didn't rotate the original image, PCC worked fine. Not sure what the diff is since it worked for you. Maybe the scale of the image? Thanks again!
this is great, i'm new to PI, just starting to learn, and nice to have a tutorial to be able to follow along and apply the steps....to one of my images...A quick suggestion: I believe you can create a preview window when doing different transformations, such as curves, histo, etc....so you can apply to the preview, and see the effect prior to applying to the image....seems like it would be better to do that, instead of applying an effect, seeing it is too much, undoing, going back, changing it, re-applying, seeing out it looks, etc.. or even sometimes there are live preview....instead of blindly adjusting curves, etc....
You're right Greg. I was consciously trying to make this series of videos shorter by moving through the steps quickly, but if I end up having to undo, and start again that just takes more time. Honestly, even with previews I often have to step back in PI. One thing I prefer about the Photoshop workflow is working on a new layer, I can just blink it fast with with the visibility icon, and either keep the changes, delete the changes (by deleting the layer), or apply the changes at x% strength with layer opacity. I know this is all sort of possible in PI, but it takes so much longer, and many processes (like PixelMath) don't have real-time previews.
Hi Nico, another great tutorial. It would be awesome if u created a group on discord so we can discuss things about astrophotography....... if u wish. BTW just got my Canon EOS 1200D.!!!!!! Support from all the way in Sri Lanka!
Hi Bill! Congrats on the camera. Between youtube comments and patreon, I'm afraid I don't have time for discord at the moment, but maybe in the future.
Fantastic work, thank you so much Nico! Do you think you can make a tutorial for M45 one day, without tracker if possible? For some reason, I am having such a difficult time to bring out colours and nebulae and would be great to follow your tutorial. Cheers!
You read my mind. I actually have already shot M45 untracked and it came out great, now I just need to make the video. Given the other videos I have to finish first, it probably won't come out until November at the earliest. Clear skies, Nico
Hi, can't appreciate your work high enough. It encourages me to continue even I've got kinda setback yesterday. Did the settings like you suggested and run Pixinsight but it failed on me. Calibration of darks, flats and biases went well but not on lights: Group of 100 Light frames BINNING : 1 Filter : NoFilter Exposure : 15.00s Found Calibrate [Calibration data] Master bias: C:/Users/Besitzer/Pictures/Astrofoto/MilkyWay200921/BatchPreprocessing/master/masterBias-BINNING_1.xisf Master dark: C:/Users/Besitzer/Pictures/Astrofoto/MilkyWay200921/BatchPreprocessing/master/masterDark-BINNING_1-EXPTIME_15.xisf Master flat: C:/Users/Besitzer/Pictures/Astrofoto/MilkyWay200921/BatchPreprocessing/master/masterFlat-BINNING_1-FILTER_NoFilter.xisf *** Warning: Image Calibration failed *** Warning: All calibrated light frame files have been removed or cannot be accessed. Went trough Pixinsight forum, found a similar question but there was no answer. What could be the issue here?
Love these videos. Is there a reason when you stretch that you do not use the Screen Transfer Function and drag the triangle to the Histogram tool instead of stretchin old school way? Or are you just old school?
Mostly just old school, but I also like the control of doing the stretch by hand rather than trusting the autostretch. I think occasionally it way over-does it on the high-end and bleaches star color a bit.
i wonder why that red (even walking?) pattern around the Galaxy is not present in the tutorial with DSS+Photoshop? Because that seems to take the most time to correct in PI. First i thought that it comes from the Canon Sensor.....Many thanks and greeting from germany
Yes, it probably comes from the Canon sensor + this method of taking the pictures (untracked). The 60D is pretty old, and 1 sec. exposures are very short in terms of signal to noise. The galaxy was constantly drifting in the frame, but the part of the frame with the most signal was the galaxy itself since that is where I kept re-centering. This is why the edges are noisier, with that red noise. It was still there in the DSS+Photoshop version, but because of the order of operations (and the fact that Photoshop does not have a "STF Autostretch" feature) we never saw it. Not sure if it comes across in the video, but the detail in the galaxy and the noise control are much better in this PixInsight version vs. the Photoshop version, but I'm sure some will prefer the punchier colors I did in Photoshop. I could have done the same in PixInsight, but I guess I was feeling more restrained when recording. :)
Hola Nico saludos de Argentina hace poco que te estoy siguiendo, muy buen contenido no entiendo muy bien el inglés pero algo si👏por lo que vi PixInsight tiene un programa para apilar? Y de ese resultado editaste ya ahy la imagen ?? Saludos cordiales 📷👌👏🌌
I used a 200mm f.l. lens with a Canon Crop sensor so 200*1.6=320. But typically astrophotographers don't use crop factor, but rather image scale (resolution) and field of view. My image scale for this combination is 4.4 arcseconds per pixel, and field of view is 6.3x4.2 degrees. The full width of Andromeda is approximately 3 degrees, telling me, it will fit nicely with this gear combination, but for more detail I could go to an even higher focal length. The reason I don't is because I'm not using tracking so I would be trading resolution for noise. Yes, you can. Check out the image mode on this FOV calculator to see how it would frame up on your particular camera: astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/
I need help with intervalometer, for my DSLR(Nikon D3500) there is no cable port or IR port for it, only micro usb and hdmi. Is there an intervalometer with micro usb? Because I cant really find one.
Hmmm, you may have to connect the camera to a laptop, tablet, or phone with the usb cable and use a free app like qDSLRDashboard (free on Android and Windows) to control it
Unfortunately, I doubt that would work, as the USB port on the d3500 wasn't designed to accept the simple pulses from an intervalometer. But Google it, maybe I'm wrong
Hi I'm looking to buy a lens for astrophotography. I'm thinking of getting the Fuji 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 or 55-140mm f2.8. Would like to shoot the moon, Galaxy, and nebula. Can get a star tracker if needed. Thanks.
For astrophotography, I'd probably advise the 55-140 f2.8 if you want to start untracked. If you plan to get the tracker, you could get the other lens, but I'd start at the 100mm side. 400mm is a bit long for a simple star tracker to handle.
Question: if my camera is not using a bayer matrix, would pixinsight still work with my raw files? Also, you set the focal length to 200mm, as this was the lens used but... you were shooting on a Canon APS-C camera, so rather an equivalent of 320mm for FF. Shouldn’t you use the equivalent focal length rather? Wondering the same about the NPF calculator btw. Thanks.
Yes, PixInsight can work with a variety of color filter arrays including fuji, doesn't have to be Bayer. No, we never use equivalent focal length in Astronomy, the formula already accounts for the size of the sensor and pixel size, so use the actual focal length of the lens
OK Nico! Been wanting to ask you, what is your favorite of the processing apps.? I bet I know😊 Saw your email from patreon, excited about all the videos coming up👌 Cheers!
PixInsight, but it's also feels like the hardest for me to teach. Whenever I'm making a video with it, I always feel like there are so many steps to go through that if I explain every little thing it will take hours to get through. I am looking in to some new scripts called the EZ suite that someone developed. Interested to see if they truly are "EZ" ;) Also, I should point out that for my own work (outside of UA-cam) I almost always start in PixInsight and end in Photoshop. There are some creative elements with color that I am still much more comfortable completing in Photoshop.
@@NebulaPhotos i find Siril great with all that steps (which look like "copied" from PI) and takes a lot automated pre-processing with superb results. Stacking, Background Extraction- and Neutralization, Stretching, Color Photo-Calibration, removal of green etc etc, and the rest in PS.
@@majortom4338 Yep, It's pretty great, but I still run into errors time to time with Siril, often with fairly cryptic error messages. For instance, with my Andromeda stack, it kept erroring out on registration rather than just skipping over bad frames using the automatic script. I fed PixInsight the same stack in BPP and it worked fine. So since I already own PI, I don't find myself going to Siril much except for making videos, because it is definitely the best of the free programs.
Greetings Niko. Thanks for the informative videos. I want to get into Astro photography. I’m seeking your expert advice on which camera (s) you would recommend. I will be doing Bird photography, nature flowers trees ect. Creeks. Landscape. Lastly Astro photography! I wanna do 4K time lapse video. For the camera budget is 1500-2500. Max around 3k usd. Also what lenses? Thank you for taking the time to respond. Welcoming advice from viewers as well. Thanks everyone
Sorry to respond with a question, but are you new to photography or do you already have some gear? If so, any lenses/accessories you want to keep using?
@@NebulaPhotos thank you for responding. TOTATLLY New. i dont have a single piece of camera gear. that why im being very careful getting as much info before i begin purchasing gear this black friday :D :D
Nebula Photos my lens budget is about 2k flexible. I want to get two different lenses out of that. One wide angle for milky way shots and 4k time lapse. And another for bird photography being able to zoom in and get close ups from distance. Or for sunset and sunrise, moon pictures. As far as ranking. I know I will enjoy day time bird and nature photography, landscapes and 4k videos. The ASTRO photography really excites me and I want to try it out. Both are important to me honestly. That's why I'm willing to spend so much. Also budgets are a Lil flexible. I'd rather save up for the dream setup that performances vs cutting myself short and later regretting a piece of gear.
@@aaronhymes123 Tough one. I'd probably limit you to the three brands that are about 90% of the camera market: Canon, Nikon, and Sony. Sony has the best sensors, and sells them to Nikon. So both Sony and Nikon have better camera sensors than Canon. Canon has always had the best selection of lenses. Since Canon is #1 in sales, they also have tons of support/accessories. Nowadays, if you buy a mirrorless camera, you can adapt almost any lens for astrophotography, but for autofocus and lens-camera communication you will still want 'native' lenses, meaning lenses designed for that camera system. If you get a Canon mirrorless that opens you up to all "EF and RF Lenses". If you get a Nikon, all "Z and F Lenses". If you go Sony: "E lenses". Since Sony never made DSLRs, only mirrorless, the lens selection is smaller, but there are still many good options. Read some reviews and try to understand what is important to you. If I was starting today with your budget and needs, I'd probably get the Nikon Z6 mirrorless, the Nikon FTZ adapter, and two Sigma lenses in F mount: probably the Sigma Art 14-24mm and the Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary.
I saw another video (a presentation by Tony Hallow), where he uses a technique called ‘dithering’ between shots to eliminate colour noise. Apparently this removes the need for all the darks, flats etc. Any experience with this method? I have a Pentax with astrotracer, so each of my exposures at, say 200mm, will be more like 30 seconds each (so maybe 20-30 shots total, rather than 1000). I’m thinking that dithering might be a lot less time-consuming if I’m only taking 25 shots total....
Dithering is a good thing to do any time it's an option for you. In my tests, I still get cleaner results when I calibrate AND dither, so I do both, but experiment for yourself, and find what works for you.
I should try it again and see if I can use it without the weighting aspect. The first couple times I tried it, the 'weighting' was totally off, and by letting it pick a registration frame, it picked one with just clouds and hot pixels, and then registered all my frames to the hot pixels and gave me a total mess. For my own work (outside of YT videos) I do use SubFrameSelector, but personally I think it's a mistake to bring that into a script, where you can't get a sense of the data from the measurements and set your own approval and weighting formulas.
I followed this but my results in my opinion are really bad, especially considering the fact that I did it with a dedicated AP cam and tracked. It just looks like a light cloud mist rather than all this nice ring detail.
So great! So many variants and so many details!
Inspiration and motivation))
You are doing really great job!
Great processing instruction, especially with respect to how to use pixinsight
Thank you so much for such a detailed tutorial.
Great video I am still new to AP and got pixinsight a while ago. You used a lot of features I have not seen before really cool and don't worry your explanations are spot on. Not to long winded but having all the important info. Would love to see all 3 pictures of the series next to each other btw
Many thanks for this video, you are inspiring me to learn something new!
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks NIco! What an amazing tool. Im gonna get it.
I talked on the last video about how Siril would be good for me since I struggle with white balance, just wanted to let you know that I got the best, most accurate result so far by far when I ended up trying out Siril. Only big problem was that I ended up using up a TON of hard drive space in stacking 1500 of the files I had, if I tried to stack more I started running into issues with running low on space on an empty 1TB hard drive... Hope I can get a star tracker sometime in the future to mitigate that issue.
These videos are super helpful for people who want to get started on deep-sky astrophotography on a budget, thanks for making them!
Ah, yes. I think I ran into that problem as well actually, so *secret*: I only stacked about 450/1000 for my Siril video. What's weird is that I didn't run out of space with PI stacking 1000, what's the difference?
@@NebulaPhotos Seems like Siril's a bit wonky in that respect, then. Next image I'm hoping on doing a super wide-field image that I can get some larger nebulae in, and get longer exposures with a wide-angle lens. Just gotta wait for the moon to get out of the way. Again, thanks for doing these, I would have little to no idea how much you could do without expensive equipment without them.
Hey, thanks SO much for this. I've been futzing around with astrophotography for a little while now but recently made the jump to getting an ASI294 and autoguiding. Took me a while figuring it all out (lord it was fun!) and when I did I still had to figure out post processing. I followed the lightvortex academy to get all my captures together into a final image and then used this video for the processing of that image. Results were amazing, so thank you very much.
One note: I could not get the photometric color calibration to succeed IF I'd already rotated the image 180. But if I didn't rotate the original image, PCC worked fine. Not sure what the diff is since it worked for you. Maybe the scale of the image?
Thanks again!
First! Like it, more please :-)
this is great, i'm new to PI, just starting to learn, and nice to have a tutorial to be able to follow along and apply the steps....to one of my images...A quick suggestion: I believe you can create a preview window when doing different transformations, such as curves, histo, etc....so you can apply to the preview, and see the effect prior to applying to the image....seems like it would be better to do that, instead of applying an effect, seeing it is too much, undoing, going back, changing it, re-applying, seeing out it looks, etc.. or even sometimes there are live preview....instead of blindly adjusting curves, etc....
You're right Greg. I was consciously trying to make this series of videos shorter by moving through the steps quickly, but if I end up having to undo, and start again that just takes more time. Honestly, even with previews I often have to step back in PI. One thing I prefer about the Photoshop workflow is working on a new layer, I can just blink it fast with with the visibility icon, and either keep the changes, delete the changes (by deleting the layer), or apply the changes at x% strength with layer opacity. I know this is all sort of possible in PI, but it takes so much longer, and many processes (like PixelMath) don't have real-time previews.
Thank you. Only thing that might be missing is the starcolor calibration feature in pixinsight.
Hi Nico, another great tutorial. It would be awesome if u created a group on discord so we can discuss things about astrophotography....... if u wish.
BTW just got my Canon EOS 1200D.!!!!!! Support from all the way in Sri Lanka!
Hi Bill! Congrats on the camera. Between youtube comments and patreon, I'm afraid I don't have time for discord at the moment, but maybe in the future.
@@NebulaPhotos ok nico thx for the feedback!!
Fantastic work, thank you so much Nico!
Do you think you can make a tutorial for M45 one day, without tracker if possible? For some reason, I am having such a difficult time to bring out colours and nebulae and would be great to follow your tutorial. Cheers!
You read my mind. I actually have already shot M45 untracked and it came out great, now I just need to make the video. Given the other videos I have to finish first, it probably won't come out until November at the earliest. Clear skies, Nico
Hi, can't appreciate your work high enough. It encourages me to continue even I've got kinda setback yesterday. Did the settings like you suggested and run Pixinsight but it failed on me. Calibration of darks, flats and biases went well but not on lights:
Group of 100 Light frames
BINNING : 1
Filter : NoFilter
Exposure : 15.00s
Found
Calibrate
[Calibration data]
Master bias: C:/Users/Besitzer/Pictures/Astrofoto/MilkyWay200921/BatchPreprocessing/master/masterBias-BINNING_1.xisf
Master dark: C:/Users/Besitzer/Pictures/Astrofoto/MilkyWay200921/BatchPreprocessing/master/masterDark-BINNING_1-EXPTIME_15.xisf
Master flat: C:/Users/Besitzer/Pictures/Astrofoto/MilkyWay200921/BatchPreprocessing/master/masterFlat-BINNING_1-FILTER_NoFilter.xisf
*** Warning: Image Calibration failed
*** Warning: All calibrated light frame files have been removed or cannot be accessed.
Went trough Pixinsight forum, found a similar question but there was no answer. What could be the issue here?
Hmmm, haven't seen that error. Just a guess-- do you have plenty of hard disk space on the C drive?
@@NebulaPhotos Will check this evening. System ist not so old. ... maybe cut it down to 50 lights
Love these videos. Is there a reason when you stretch that you do not use the Screen Transfer Function and drag the triangle to the Histogram tool instead of stretchin old school way? Or are you just old school?
Mostly just old school, but I also like the control of doing the stretch by hand rather than trusting the autostretch. I think occasionally it way over-does it on the high-end and bleaches star color a bit.
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks. Agreed STF is a bit hot in the highlights and diminishes some of the contrast needed for the dust lanes.
whats your next project i am excited 🤩
Trying to finish some reviews. Next month hope to release "The Pleiades" without tracker.
@@NebulaPhotos 🤘🤘
i wonder why that red (even walking?) pattern around the Galaxy is not present in the tutorial with DSS+Photoshop? Because that seems to take the most time to correct in PI. First i thought that it comes from the Canon Sensor.....Many thanks and greeting from germany
Yes, it probably comes from the Canon sensor + this method of taking the pictures (untracked). The 60D is pretty old, and 1 sec. exposures are very short in terms of signal to noise. The galaxy was constantly drifting in the frame, but the part of the frame with the most signal was the galaxy itself since that is where I kept re-centering. This is why the edges are noisier, with that red noise. It was still there in the DSS+Photoshop version, but because of the order of operations (and the fact that Photoshop does not have a "STF Autostretch" feature) we never saw it. Not sure if it comes across in the video, but the detail in the galaxy and the noise control are much better in this PixInsight version vs. the Photoshop version, but I'm sure some will prefer the punchier colors I did in Photoshop. I could have done the same in PixInsight, but I guess I was feeling more restrained when recording. :)
Hola Nico saludos de Argentina hace poco que te estoy siguiendo, muy buen contenido no entiendo muy bien el inglés pero algo si👏por lo que vi PixInsight tiene un programa para apilar? Y de ese resultado editaste ya ahy la imagen ?? Saludos cordiales 📷👌👏🌌
Sí, pixinsight puede hacer todo.
@@NebulaPhotos gracias una pregunta tus vídeos podrían venir traducidos al español ?? Sería excelente saludos soy tu nuevo suscriptor de Argentina 🇦🇷.
Lo siento, no. Pero prueba la función de traducción automática en los subtítulos
@@NebulaPhotos si vi uno con traducción en español los demás están en inglés solamente 🤷 Garcías.
What is the focal length with the crop factor of the image?
And can I get this image with 200 mm focal length?
Thanks in advance
I used a 200mm f.l. lens with a Canon Crop sensor so 200*1.6=320. But typically astrophotographers don't use crop factor, but rather image scale (resolution) and field of view. My image scale for this combination is 4.4 arcseconds per pixel, and field of view is 6.3x4.2 degrees. The full width of Andromeda is approximately 3 degrees, telling me, it will fit nicely with this gear combination, but for more detail I could go to an even higher focal length. The reason I don't is because I'm not using tracking so I would be trading resolution for noise.
Yes, you can. Check out the image mode on this FOV calculator to see how it would frame up on your particular camera: astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/
A good tutorial but I think Pixinsight may be a little advanced for people doing this type of untracked image.
Have you tried using the EZ proccessing suite in pix insight?
Just heard about it a few days ago. Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but looking forward to it. :)
@@NebulaPhotos its really easy and useful as the name would imply, a buddy of mine darkarchon made it. He's also a developer on N.I.N.A
running starnet on my shot of andromeda with 35mm lens, cropped in...starnet removed the galaxy core. How do I prevent this?
I need help with intervalometer, for my DSLR(Nikon D3500) there is no cable port or IR port for it, only micro usb and hdmi. Is there an intervalometer with micro usb? Because I cant really find one.
Hmmm, you may have to connect the camera to a laptop, tablet, or phone with the usb cable and use a free app like qDSLRDashboard (free on Android and Windows) to control it
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks for advice! But what if I'll try to use 3.5 jack to micro usb adapter?
Unfortunately, I doubt that would work, as the USB port on the d3500 wasn't designed to accept the simple pulses from an intervalometer. But Google it, maybe I'm wrong
Does this apply to crop sensor dslr's as well as the full?
Yep, either will work well
Hi I'm looking to buy a lens for astrophotography. I'm thinking of getting the Fuji 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 or 55-140mm f2.8. Would like to shoot the moon, Galaxy, and nebula. Can get a star tracker if needed. Thanks.
For astrophotography, I'd probably advise the 55-140 f2.8 if you want to start untracked. If you plan to get the tracker, you could get the other lens, but I'd start at the 100mm side. 400mm is a bit long for a simple star tracker to handle.
Question: if my camera is not using a bayer matrix, would pixinsight still work with my raw files?
Also, you set the focal length to 200mm, as this was the lens used but... you were shooting on a Canon APS-C camera, so rather an equivalent of 320mm for FF. Shouldn’t you use the equivalent focal length rather? Wondering the same about the NPF calculator btw.
Thanks.
Yes, PixInsight can work with a variety of color filter arrays including fuji, doesn't have to be Bayer. No, we never use equivalent focal length in Astronomy, the formula already accounts for the size of the sensor and pixel size, so use the actual focal length of the lens
OK Nico! Been wanting to ask you, what is your favorite of the processing apps.?
I bet I know😊
Saw your email from patreon, excited about all the videos coming up👌
Cheers!
PixInsight, but it's also feels like the hardest for me to teach. Whenever I'm making a video with it, I always feel like there are so many steps to go through that if I explain every little thing it will take hours to get through. I am looking in to some new scripts called the EZ suite that someone developed. Interested to see if they truly are "EZ" ;) Also, I should point out that for my own work (outside of UA-cam) I almost always start in PixInsight and end in Photoshop. There are some creative elements with color that I am still much more comfortable completing in Photoshop.
@@NebulaPhotos i find Siril great with all that steps (which look like "copied" from PI) and takes a lot automated pre-processing with superb results. Stacking, Background Extraction- and Neutralization, Stretching, Color Photo-Calibration, removal of green etc etc, and the rest in PS.
@@majortom4338 Yep, It's pretty great, but I still run into errors time to time with Siril, often with fairly cryptic error messages. For instance, with my Andromeda stack, it kept erroring out on registration rather than just skipping over bad frames using the automatic script. I fed PixInsight the same stack in BPP and it worked fine. So since I already own PI, I don't find myself going to Siril much except for making videos, because it is definitely the best of the free programs.
have you done this project with affinity?
Greetings Niko. Thanks for the informative videos. I want to get into Astro photography. I’m seeking your expert advice on which camera (s) you would recommend. I will be doing Bird photography, nature flowers trees ect. Creeks. Landscape. Lastly Astro photography! I wanna do 4K time lapse video. For the camera budget is 1500-2500. Max around 3k usd. Also what lenses? Thank you for taking the time to respond. Welcoming advice from viewers as well. Thanks everyone
Sorry to respond with a question, but are you new to photography or do you already have some gear? If so, any lenses/accessories you want to keep using?
@@NebulaPhotos thank you for responding. TOTATLLY New. i dont have a single piece of camera gear. that why im being very careful getting as much info before i begin purchasing gear this black friday :D :D
@@aaronhymes123 ah, ok. Do you already have a lens budget? Is that list ranked, meaning birds are most important?
Nebula Photos my lens budget is about 2k flexible. I want to get two different lenses out of that. One wide angle for milky way shots and 4k time lapse. And another for bird photography being able to zoom in and get close ups from distance. Or for sunset and sunrise, moon pictures. As far as ranking. I know I will enjoy day time bird and nature photography, landscapes and 4k videos. The ASTRO photography really excites me and I want to try it out. Both are important to me honestly. That's why I'm willing to spend so much. Also budgets are a Lil flexible. I'd rather save up for the dream setup that performances vs cutting myself short and later regretting a piece of gear.
@@aaronhymes123 Tough one. I'd probably limit you to the three brands that are about 90% of the camera market: Canon, Nikon, and Sony. Sony has the best sensors, and sells them to Nikon. So both Sony and Nikon have better camera sensors than Canon. Canon has always had the best selection of lenses. Since Canon is #1 in sales, they also have tons of support/accessories. Nowadays, if you buy a mirrorless camera, you can adapt almost any lens for astrophotography, but for autofocus and lens-camera communication you will still want 'native' lenses, meaning lenses designed for that camera system. If you get a Canon mirrorless that opens you up to all "EF and RF Lenses". If you get a Nikon, all "Z and F Lenses". If you go Sony: "E lenses". Since Sony never made DSLRs, only mirrorless, the lens selection is smaller, but there are still many good options. Read some reviews and try to understand what is important to you. If I was starting today with your budget and needs, I'd probably get the Nikon Z6 mirrorless, the Nikon FTZ adapter, and two Sigma lenses in F mount: probably the Sigma Art 14-24mm and the Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary.
I saw another video (a presentation by Tony Hallow), where he uses a technique called ‘dithering’ between shots to eliminate colour noise. Apparently this removes the need for all the darks, flats etc. Any experience with this method?
I have a Pentax with astrotracer, so each of my exposures at, say 200mm, will be more like 30 seconds each (so maybe 20-30 shots total, rather than 1000). I’m thinking that dithering might be a lot less time-consuming if I’m only taking 25 shots total....
Dithering is a good thing to do any time it's an option for you. In my tests, I still get cleaner results when I calibrate AND dither, so I do both, but experiment for yourself, and find what works for you.
@@NebulaPhotos cheers. Thanks for replying.
Just wondering why you're not using the new script WeightedBatchPreprocessing, since the script you're using is indicated to be deprecated.. ?
I should try it again and see if I can use it without the weighting aspect. The first couple times I tried it, the 'weighting' was totally off, and by letting it pick a registration frame, it picked one with just clouds and hot pixels, and then registered all my frames to the hot pixels and gave me a total mess. For my own work (outside of YT videos) I do use SubFrameSelector, but personally I think it's a mistake to bring that into a script, where you can't get a sense of the data from the measurements and set your own approval and weighting formulas.
@@NebulaPhotos Agreed, I don't use either script, but do each step manually. Takes more time, but gives more flexability :)
I followed this but my results in my opinion are really bad, especially considering the fact that I did it with a dedicated AP cam and tracked. It just looks like a light cloud mist rather than all this nice ring detail.
Were you shooting from a dark sky? Light pollution or thin clouds are my first thought based on the description.
Is PixInsight a free program?
It is not. One time cost of around $250. Siril is a good free alternative that has many of the same features. See part 2b.