Busting Five MYTHS About Astrophotography in Ten Minutes
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- Опубликовано: 30 мар 2023
- Just having a bit of fun with this video gently 'busting' some of the misleading things I often hear about deep sky astrophotography. To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/NebulaPhotos/. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.
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My goals as a total newbie are simple. Get pictures that look cool. I don’t need them to be better than anyone else’s, just need them to come from my camera. I have a whole bunch of stuff to figure out in the process. Like all of it 🤣
If you want to print pictures look into getting adobe rgb monitor so your prints come out looking how they do on the screen
@@caviestcaveman8691 I hope this is satire
@TooSmartNA hmm no?
@@TooSmartNA I've read many things saying if you are printing your pictures to use adobeRGB monitors and color gamuts so when you print them out its pretty damn close to what the screen is outputting
@TooSmartNA I'm working on getting a photo monitor just to test and see im assuming it's gonna make a massive difference especially when dealing with colors I feel this is a pretty basic thing to enhance my images
I read a lot of forums, used different calculators. People who talk about pixels and focal length understand that an ordinary lens still has an aperture and glass quality.
I think the beauty of astrophotography is that you get to see a group of people have a personal connection and passion for the universe and that’s where the feelings of accomplishment lie. Of course NASA and dedicated researches can image the sky professionally and much better than amateur astronomers, but there’s no feeling like capturing those deep sky objects yourself.
About expensive: Just a few nights ago I took a decent picture of Barnards' loop around the lower part of the Orion Constellation, with a used astromodified DSLR with a stock lens, a tripod and a little programmable shutter releaser, processing it on an MacBook Air 😉 - because that was all I had with me on a short trip. And it is all there! Orion Nebula of course, but flame nebula as well, a glimpse of horse head, and with much fantasy you could can even see the witch head 😳🤣. And on "finding nothing new": You could mention the many crowd projects (? is that what you call it?), where research is done with the help of many amateurs, guided by professionals. Thanks for another great video, especially showing your ongoing fascination and joy!
Thanks Stefan - yes, 'crowd projects' or 'citizen science' or 'pro-am collaborations' are great - there is so much to discover, and it's so cool that anyone with an internet connection can get involved. For anyone unsure of what we are talking about, check out: zooniverse.org
This is really good content, sir. I feel like social media in particular promotes so many myths especially with the hobby attracting folks that are super nitpicky and likely overly detail oriented (e.g. bigtime pixel peepers even though its a ascetically pleasing image) Given the evolution of the hobby in just the past 3 years, new folks are often put off by that stuff and it's not necessary. So many folks get so hung up on these details they get into analysis paralysis and forget to have fun.
Realtra you are SO RIGHT ... at least for me.
I really liked the last one. I see a lot of people stressing over telescopes and dedicated cameras and not pairing them together perfectly. There's more to it than that, and if that's what you can afford, go out and have fun with it.
Nico, because of your teachings and support on RUclips I stretched out of my comfort zone, and realize I can do this!! Thanks
Great advice Nico. I generally don't listen to poeple who give authoritative advice like don't buy a doublet and 1 arcsec/pixel without asking the person what they want. Your are quite correct when you point out the sky conditions and a persons processing skills may be more of a factor in and image. It took me many years of processing before I reached the limit of my equipment. Interesting side note: There is an elderly lady in our astro club who has been getting into AP for a couple years now. She had an AVX mount from Highpoint for over a year with a 120mm refractor and someone talked her into getting a pole master so she probably spent the year trying to Polar Align but had one issue after another. I brought my setup with the ASIAIR out once and she saw it does everything she wants and someone else said the AVX sucks so she purcased a the Pegasus Harmonic mount. She came over my house and we discovered the ASIAIR was not supporting the Pegasus at that point, it may be now with the updates. While she was over she asked what side real was because it kept showing up everywhere, I said I did not know until I say on the mount and put the two words together that she was talking about "sidereal". I also found out she had no idea what a meridian flip was. Recognizing she was over her head I thought she would be a great candidate for the Vespera so I recommended that she watch your video on you vs. the Robot Scope. Happy to report she is putting out some pretty good images after 2 years of messing around. Cheers
The ASIAir is astrophotography on easy
The biggest myth of them all would be "Astro forums are a good place for advice". XD Somehow the most respected posters there seem to be the ones doubling down on all of the myths listed in this video. Thanks a lot for this video, hoping it will reach the "gurus" so they can stop confusing beginners. :)
Great video! The image scale “rule” tripped me up for years, until I realized severely undersampled images were some of my favorite!
Good advice! And thanks for the mention :)
Thanks Bray. Congrats again on the discovery! It's a remarkable object you've found.
@@NebulaPhotos I got pretty lucky with it. Interestingly, it is a region that Marcel and Xavier had noted in an Ha survey but chose to not investigate because it is very dull in Ha
Some myths I have come across: 1) you can't image the milky way unless its dark sky. 2) you need a very big aperture to get good moon pics 3) you need 10 min subs 4) you need to cool cameras to -30 degs. 5) guiding has to be 1". And the main one for me as AZGTi user.. you can't do astrophotography with a lightweight mount!
I see people freak out over super long subs all the time. I usually shoot 1 min subs... It's just a matter of how many subs you want to deal with.
Timely..good..factual..myths broken..comparing expenses with so called daily life..example
Netflix ..down to earth..no one told these in simple language.. congratulations!
Nice Video!i started Astrophotography with my call phone and A Tripod taking picture of wide Constellations. Now I own an Alt az Goto Mount from Orion, 500$ and A ZWO asi 224mc. 200$. And I'm still able to shoot Galaxies from my Bortle 9 skies and My apartment (which is not ideal!)
And yes, Don't let anyone tell you there isn't much too shoot in the night sky. A lot of people think of the Moon as. Boring Target it's Just a Big rock floating in sky. But when you look at The moon up close It's Truly another world! This also includes Planets. I have noticed the Surface of Planet Jupiter is constantly changing every year by comparing my images to Old ones. Great video Nico, Clear skies!
Yeah, I chased the path of buying all the big expensive equipment as shown in other videos, only to learn that a little star tracker and DSLR gives me the most enjoyment.
I also agree with the astronomy club thing. You get to learn from guys that have done this for 30+ years and use some really expensive equipment that is already put together for use.
I am glad you are encouraging people to use what they have. The TOA130 is nice but you can do plenty with optics 1/20 of the price
For us beginners, it's quite a hard learning curve, when you watch so many videos on RUclips you can go completely crazy haha.
This month I am going to buy my first equatorial mount, a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer GTI and I am really excited.
Thanks for your videos, I always learn new things with you! :D
Don't give up
Thanks Nico! Great job on this and I couldn't agree more with you on all aspects, especially on the first point. I am using an EvoGuide 50ED with some narrowband filters, a very cheap EQ mount, and a mono planetary camera and I am getting amazing pictures (at least in my opinion). The whole setup cost me around $1500 which shocks everyone that I share my images with (especially after my processing skills have improved and I learned how to choose which nights to use to gather some data - both very valuable skills imo)
The under/oversampling thing is what I encountered recently while trying to determine whether the zwo asi183mc pro or 533 would be better for the redcat 51 I just ordered. What I heard was that the larger pixels of the 533 would undersample my image but that I could drizzle for higher resolution. Can’t say I understand all that since I’m relatively new to the hobby, but it seems the general consensus is that the 533mc pro is the better choice.
take a look on astrobin, there's plenty of photos with both cameras on there. You would be fine with either.
What do you think of DWARF II as a intro into astrophotography? I want to shoot the next two solar eclipses and the tracking and time lapse features really caught my eye.
Hi Brian, I have a demo unit, and have been trying it out. Hope to release a review eventually. It's pretty impressive as an astronomy device, esp. for the price. My short answer is it feels like a 'jack of all trades, master of none'. It can do a lot of different things pretty well, but it has serious limitations, while if you start with a DSLR and lens, you can then add a star tracker, and then a small telescope, etc. gradually improving your kit. The DWARF II will always be limited by the sensor and optics, and tracking it has. I'm not sure how well it would do with a total eclipse- I'll think about that as I'm preparing my review.
Great video Nico nice to see these points covered.
I see that last one all the time. I think part of it is a certain online tool. :)
I tell people that 1" rule is really just a guideline. As you showed with that blue horsehead.. it's not a hard set rule. I should mention the same is true in the opposite direction. If the skies support it, you can go a good bit below 1". CS!
Absolutely!
very good advice, I don't think its possible to give advice without saying "it depends" whats right for a particular task changes radially depending upon do they have a garden, or a car... Joining a club is a great idea and look out for any organizational outreach such as thailand's astroparks, which are a good example of what can be done.
Really nicely put simple and to the point. Awesome little video.
Excellent presentation as usual Nico. Understanding arc seconds in regardst to DSO's and tracking is a softspot for me and I would love to see your approach to explaining this.
As for the you have to be rich there's always buying second hand as pretty much everything I own is,.
Great advice as always Nico clear skies!!
Absolutely useful video. Meaningful advice from experience, the basis of which is: set your goal/expectations first, choose accordingly then.
Nico the Non-Savage Myth Buster! ;-)
I'm only a beginner but two of the "myths" I've come across recently are _"there are no green colours in space"_ and _"gain is the same as ISO"_ and they've both come from astrophotography RUclipsrs who have several thousand subscribers and hundreds of videos.
Also, when buying my gear to get set up over the last few months, I went with the cheapest refractor I could find, a Bresser AR102s/600 for about €220, and then I spent most of my money on the mount (€1,300), and camera (€500). Since I thought I definitely didn't want to be upgrading the mount any time soon and I wasn't sure what focal length I wanted to shoot at, so I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on a scope and then find out it wasn't for me.
The 600mm focal length is a little tight, and I find that I have to look for targets to match it, but it does make things interesting. But I think I'll definitely hold on to it when I buy a more expensive scope in the future. I'd definitely prefer to have a solid mount and a bit CA (although I haven't had any yet) rather than a mount that can't reliably track.
And in the future I'd rather have 2 scopes and 1 mount, than 1 scope and 2 mounts.
Ha, the green one is funny - you think people would know better after looking at Orion or the Dumbbell Nebula.
The Gain = ISO is interesting - would really require a full 10-20 minute video to unpack that. I do see that as a useful equivalence if we are talking about CMOS sensors in both cases- of course the devil are in the details and it could be confusing since the actual numbers and specifics are hard to translate back and forth. But conceptually setting ISO or Gain is the same idea: you are limiting the full well capacity by raising these values, which typically lowers the readout noise at the cost of dynamic range. Where ISO and gain are clearly not the same: Try gain 0 and ISO 100 (as low as each kind of camera goes) - Gain 0 will usually work just fine, but ISO 100 on so many cameras is a recipe for banding hell!
@@NebulaPhotos I think this guy was confusing normal video gain with gain in astro cameras. He was setting his gain (for his ZWO 462MC) to 75 and he said he didn't want to raise it anymore because he'd get more noise, but the unity gain for his camera was 80!
Great advices! They are all spot on.
I totally agree why make it so complicated when it doesn’t have to be I am a beginner as well
I have been very slowly building a set-up to hopefully, finally, be able to take my first successful DSO photograph. 😀 I'm very new in this genre of photography and greatly appreciate you and others for sharing your talents and knowledge for us to learn from. Maybe I'll run into you one (clear and dark sky
;-) ) day! Thank you! One question for you though, and no need to answer if you don't want to, but will you be planning on photographing to total solar eclipse predicted for next April? If that's not your sky jam I understand, but if you have a recommended area in the New England states please let me know if you can. I'd like to make advance plans around my day job! LOL! Thanks again! 🙂
Great video once again
I really like your videos. Do try to find new undiscovered galaxies etc? Or do you just point and shoot and see what happens? Thanks!!
Good advice.
Nice 60fps! Thank you ☺️
I appreciate addressing those myths and giving the last push to those in the verge of trying Astrophotography.
😁 I might still not do it (60 fps) for long videos because of the extreme file sizes, but for short ones in the office, I thought I’d give it a try.
I think shooting under sampled is a good thing for my goals, which are to make big and beautiful prints. Under sampled data plus drizzle equals big printouts. 👍
thank you - well said....
I like this soapboxy stuff
Another great video, thanks for this, any chance you could clear the air on “bin 1” or “bin 2”…what’s bin?
iam 61 just starting out take photos of the night sky and love it
Just. Start. Shooting.
I started with a Sony A6000, a 60 year old Nikon lens, and a 3x teleconverter. I didn't take great pictures.... But there were Jupiter's moons! There were Saturn's rings! There was Titan!
Just start exploring.
Very useful video to many people…👍🏻
Great video! The best advice for beginners might just be, "Don't pay too much attention to the advice of experts." ;-)
More seriously, many of these myths are the same thing I've heard over and over again from people (usually guys) who pursue technical hobbies with a lot of expensive gear, which can generally be summed up by, "Nothing but the best will do." Okay - there are always better results to be had, but if I'm happy with the results I'm getting, don't try to tell me I'm wrong to be happy.
Great advice, a really useful video (wish it had of existed 2 years ago 😂)
شكرا لك على هذا الفيديو المحفز يا صديقي.
Cost; compared to what other hobby? Golf $6k/yr gear $6k, Snow skiing, $3k/yr gear $5k, snow mobiles $4k/yr gear $150k (truck $100k, trailer $30k, snowmobile $20k) and so on. My boat cost $100k, yacht club membership is $6k year, this hobby is one of the most affordable I’ve ever been involved with. I guess it’s all relative, these costs are in Canadian dollars.
I try an get the best results from cheap kit, not the hobby killer rubbish but good budget kit or even better tinkering and repurposing stuff. I love using good vintage M42 lenses at the moment, more bang for your buck as they say over the pond from me.
I supposedly extremely under-sampled with my scope and camera and I still get good looking pictures that I really like.
Yep, I fell head first in the "get a fancy telescope" advice. Considering my sky conditions and editing skills, now I know that I'd get exactly the same images with a telescope costing a third or less. I still have this fancy-pants scope, but it's money that could've been spent better elsewhere.
There are also a lot of myths about calibration frames.
The biggest one is probably the idea that they remove noise, which is just straight up not true. If anything they add noise, with noise being uncertainty in what a colour of a given pixel should be. What calibration frames do is remove certain effects and aberrations in the data. And so what you actually have to do is ask yourself if removing the aberrations is worth the extra noise. Here is my heuristic:
- flats are always worth it, take your flats
- you should always take your darks and dark flats but only apply them in processing if you're experiencing significant issues without them like amp glow
- unless you're doing photometry, bias frames are almost never worth it
The other big one relates to technique for taking flats. Some will tell you that your focus for taking flats should be exactly, und exactly, the same as the focus for your lights. This is also not really true, as is evidenced by the fact that you also need to refocus your scope every so often but only take one set of flats. Having your focus for flats close to your focus for lights is generally better, but it's not that big of a deal if you accidentally knock your focuser a little bit.
Whenever I show people my 50mm images they ask me how I zoomed in so far 😂
I want to take pictures of faint distant galaxies. But that high focal length = high $$$.
I can't tell you how many times I've written "people make way too big a deal over the sampling numbers" on various fora. Inevitably, some budding astrophotographer has read somewhere and/or received advice from someone about "matching the camera to the scope" and "1 arcsecond per pixel is where you want to be". Bah... pick a scope that matches what YOU want to image. The Blue Horsehead image you shared is a prime example. The phrase "missing the forest for the trees" comes to mind.
Can you match a camera and scope to get a specific image scale? Sure. Should that be the driving factor behind your purchase? No.
The same kind of thing goes for the whole doublet/triplet/quad/whatever argument. Are there lousy doublets? Absolutely. Just like there are lousy triplets. Like I wrote before, buy the scope that matches what you want to do. Looking to take wide field images of big, diffuse nebulae? That's a far different scope than someone who wants to resolve the details of Melotte 15.
You made a very poignant statement in the video and it bears repeating: if you are asked to give advice, make sure to actually talk to the person you are advising. Find out what they want. Share your expertise and help them make a good decision. Don't just spout out the typical "you need an 80mm triplet and a mount that costs as much as some new cars". If they already own equipment, try to help them understand what they can expect from it.
I wonder what a crowd sourced seastar s50 farm might achieve
Assuming you attended the NEAF show and your going to release a video soon? When these shows hit the UK, there’s 15 videos the next day.
I attended, but won’t be doing a video. I had to focus on my talk and meeting people. Trying to make a video would have added too much to my plate.
Are you still working on your latest photo review and SL2 giveaway ?? I'm very curious about your results.
Astrophotography can be as cheap as you want it to as expensive as you want, but if you don't put any effort/passion and time into your images, you won't get good results. I have taken fantastic widefield images years ago with a old 3 meg digital camera, cheap RA tracking mount and free software . More money does help if you want to get on APOD for picture of the day but.
As for doublets v triplets, these days good doublets can rival triplets on CA unless you are looking at Astrophysics scopes or Taks. Comparing my cheaper triplet to my dearer doublet, I cannot see any difference.
Actually some APOD images are just a DSLR on a tripod, but APOD is also a bit of a scam in that some winners were friends of the people running the site... So don't use that as a gauge of what is the best out there.
"misguided"....no pun intended!
question - what would you suggest to use to filter out light pollution for shooting galaxies?
Nothing, shoot lots of short unfiltered* sub-exposures. *or a UV/IR cut if your camera is full spectrum
Hello, please advise the best telescope up to 2 thousand dollars, I'm a beginner, but I want to start with more powerful devices
What do you already have? And what are you interested in capturing? Email me if easier: nicocarver at gmail dot com
Hey, I saw one of your videos and you said that auto rotation should be disabled when doing astrophotography. Why exactly does this need to be done?
Some stacking software will be confused by it if you have a mix of horizontal and vertical photos. Disabling it will avoid this issue
Will I see you at NEAF?
Yep, I will be there.
Is a canon Rebel t3i and a 75-300mm lens good for astrophotography?
Yes, that’s good to start out. When you can, add a star tracker as it will open up many more objects to capture
@@NebulaPhotos thanks!
@@NebulaPhotos is the 75-300 mm lens good for galaxy photography?
@@Astrogeek215 It will do well for Andromeda Galaxy. Most galaxies are very small so a telescope is the best choice, but you can still shoot them with the lens.
@@NebulaPhotos ok thanks! Have a good night or day
Patience is one of the biggest requirements for Astro photography!
35mm or 50mm, which is better to capture Milky Way?
If you want to include landscape, 35mm. For including landscape, a lot of milky way photographers prefer even wider like 20mm. That said, 50mm can be interesting too, depends on the time of year and your options for how to frame the shot.
What cheap dslr should I buy for astrophotography???
Used Canon rebel, t3i (600d) or newer.
@@NebulaPhotos sorry if this annoys you but I’m on a tight budget so maybe a used t2i with 18-55mm lens?
Im really new to astrophotography so I don’t have a telescope so I just want a dslr
@@aandj4012 The T2i is alright, but see if you can swing a used nifty fifty (50mm f/1.8) instead of the 18-55 - the 18-55 is pretty soft and slow for untracked astrophotography.
@@NebulaPhotos By the way is the t2i good for galaxy photography or planetary photography?
Low cost only if i don't live in Mexico or peru etc xd
Did I miss #3?
3:25
Ah see, I have avoided these by buying practically nothing other than a camera and reflector scope… yay crappy gear gang unite!
You need to be a millionaire to do it.
When is your reviews on people photos coming? You said it would come in February and it is April.
I don’t think I made any promises on release date. The critiques take me as long as they take me. Each time I get more submissions to go through so each time it has taken longer.
The only fee to join our club is your email. ( 7 ponds astronomy Dryden MI. )