Need advice on Stacking Software

My new camera came today: a Canon Rebel T3, EOS 1100D. I'm going to finally go back to taking wide FOV astrophotography shots.

However, instead of the old school way (film, develop, then scan), it's all digital this time around.

However, I've been out of the game for a while and could use some recommendations on stacking software that's out there.

So what do my fellow astrophotographers out there like to use, and could I have links please?

reply to post by eriktheawful


I use Registax and there are some good Youtube videos out there on how to use it.

Give you some results like this!

reply to post by abeverage


Cool. I'll check it out. I was looking at Deep Sky Stacker.

I can do post processing after, but a good stacker is a must.

reply to post by eriktheawful

I have a Canon T2i
It's quirky and I have actually found doing a 640x480 crop movie can get you some crazy good results. You will have to let me see your results. What kind of scope you have?

reply to post by eriktheawful


Have a look here this may be of interest to you.

forums.dpreview.com...


Many Registax & DSS users on there with all types of cameras scopes and trackers

reply to post by abeverage


My main telescope for photography is my 5 inch newtonian. The mount for it is heavy enough for the camera equipment.

Using manual tracking.....(yah, very old school, I know).

However, my mount needs to be refurbished before I use it again, and my adaptor for my old Canon AE1 will not fit on my new camera, so I'll have to go get one.

I need to see if Canon makes any lens adapters. I have an old 210mm telescopic lens that I'd love to try out with this new camera.

reply to post by wmd_2008


Thanks wmd!

I'll check it out too while I'm at it.

reply to post by eriktheawful


A 210mm telescopic lens? HOLY CRAP! Where you get that? Yeah the new mounts have to have an adapter and if there were any stabilizer/AF features they may not work.

Be fun to mess around with some of those old huge lenses! Good luck!

Oh also I got a little scmidt Nextstar5 that has kept me happy for 13 years now!

Originally posted by abeverage
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

A 210mm telescopic lens? HOLY CRAP! Where you get that? Yeah the new mounts have to have an adapter and if there were any stabilizer/AF features they may not work.

Be fun to mess around with some of those old huge lenses! Good luck!

Oh also I got a little scmidt Nextstar5 that has kept me happy for 13 years now!

It's a Dejur 80mm-210mm Macro lens. I got it from a friend who no longer had an interest in photography, who had bought it back in....the 70's I think?
Anyways, he gave it all to me back in the 90's, as he just didn't want it anymore.

I did find this link here about making a homemade adapter......willing to give it a shot as I have everything he's talking about.
Unless I want to spend over 2 grand on a new lens that's the same as this one, hehehehe.

Here's the link:

people.rit.edu...

oh, BTW -

I took a shot of the sun this afternoon:



Don't worry folks....that's not Nibiru next to it, it's a lens flare....but if you do think it's Nibiru, no worries, looks like that jet is going to make a chemtrail to cover it up.........



Sorry, couldn't resist!

Originally posted by wmd_2008
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

Have a look here this may be of interest to you.

forums.dpreview.com...


Many Registax & DSS users on there with all types of cameras scopes and trackers

That's the combo I use. Registax for lunar/planetary shots, DSS for deep space. The latter is very nice for that function, but if you're shooting and stacking RAWs (which you should for deep space shots) then the output is a high bit depth file (16 bit or even 32 bit if you're doing HDR). To make final adjustments to the levels, curves, etc before I export it to an 8 bit jpg, I use PixInsight LE. The LE version was free but they don't distribute it anymore and the full version is quite expensive. It's nice though because it's quite powerful, so if you can still find it somewhere I would get it. Another option is IRIS, but although it's also free and quite powerful (in some ways more, in other ways less) it's far less user friendly and is much more reliant on text commands.
www.astrosurf.com...

reply to post by ngchunter


Thanks for your input ngc.

Last night I was out with the camera on my tripod, learning how to use it. Quite a difference from my old SLR camera!

I was used to making 15 second shots with it. With this new camera, 15 seconds and I'm getting streaks! Forgot how sensitive the CCD is.

That and I'm having problems focusing the lens to infinity. My old 50mm FD lens for the Canon AE1, you simply turned it all the way over to it's stop and there you were.

This 18-55mm lens for the Rebel, doesn't work that way. If you turn it all the way over, it goes back out of focus! So I'm going to have to play around with it here in the daylight today to learn how to properly focus it to infinity.

I'm also a bit annoyed that it doesn't want to let me change the F stop. It doesn't want to let me go down further than 5.6 on it, and that annoys the crap out of me.

Ah well, the joys of learning how to use new equipment!

reply to post by eriktheawful


Hi eriktheawful

I have a Sony SLT camera hoping to do some sky shots/comet Panstarrs if I get some clear weather.

Wide angle full aperture 20-30 seconds at 1600 iso seems to be the settings most used.

Focus on a lit object far enough in the distance then switch to manual focus.

My kit lens is 18-55 but it's f3.5 full open at 18mm.

When I switch my camera off the lens parks at infinity focus I just flick to manual and switch back on then fine focus,my camera has live view on LCD & EVF and auto focus all the time due to the fixed mirror, I switch to manual focus use the zoom function and focus peaking to get correct focus it's also best to use mirror lock up or self timer if you don't have that function (not a problem on mine)

Light pollution is also a problem for me but I have a dark sky site about an hours drive from me I hope to visit one night.

reply to post by wmd_2008


Switching the ISO around is a very NEW thing for me, hehehehe. I'm used to buying the film speed and that's what you're stuck with!

My main stay back then was ISO 800. I played around with some ISO 1600 film, but my shots always seemed too grainy or noisy.

Here's a shot I took of the crescent moon last night (sorry, I think the comet is behind the trees). ISO was set to 1600 and was a 1.5 second exposure. 55mm with the F stop at 5.6, 15 minutes after sunset:



Then here's Orion that I shot, single frame, 15 second exposure, 18mm F stop again at 5.6, but with the ISO set to 800, and hour after sunset:



I'll tell you, feeling like a NOOB all over again with this new camera. Took me years to learn all the quirks on my old SLR, heheheh. Hoping I'll learn the quirks faster with this one.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Hey that's a good image of Orion can you not change the aperture if you go manual

Focus looks ok what does it look like at full size

Originally posted by wmd_2008
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

Hey that's a good image of Orion can you not change the aperture if you go manual

Focus looks ok what does it look like at full size

Well, after reading the manual (you know, that thing us guys tend to ignore?), I found out how to change the aperture while in manual mode. However, with this lens, I can only take the F stop down to 5.6 at 55mm and down to 3.5 while at 18mm. It will not go any lower than that.

If you could see the full sized 4272 x 2848 frame, you'd see that they stars are actually out of focus slightly.

However, I discovered (also by reading the manual....dang I wish they'd tell us to read these things!) that I can go to "Live View" and using the LCD display, I can move the focus square around the frame to where I want, then hit the magnify button. It has 2 levels, 5x an 10x, which allows me to very, very, very gently adjust the focus even more.

So I'll be playing with that tonight and see how that works out. However, for today I'm going to work on this home made adapter ring so I can try attaching my FD 70mm - 210mm telephoto lens and see how well it performs (i'm a bit worried about the difference in the 44mm to 42mm focusing difference when Canon changed it back in the late 80's)

reply to post by wmd_2008


Here we go, I cropped the picture and then uploaded it to ATS, so it's not automatically scaled down.

As you can see, it's out of focus:

reply to post by eriktheawful


You may not get infinity focus if there is a difference.

FD-EOS adaptors

reply to post by eriktheawful


Nice camera!
I know you were after deep sky imaging software,but as folks have already told you about Registax,Star trails is also good-
Star Trails is a free prog which you can use to make "motion"shots of the stars using stacked images:



www.startrails.de...

Also,you probably know about stellarium,which is handy for finding locations in the sky,and can also be configured to sync with your scope(if you have a"goto"type mount).

stellarium.sourceforge.net...

Good luck,can't wait to see where you are at after a few months of practice!

reply to post by wmd_2008


You are absolutely right.

The problem is that they (Canon) moved the distance to the back from 42mm to 44mm, and that makes a world of difference.

So you have 3 choices:

1) Give up and buy one of the new lenses (at almost 2 thousand dollars.....uh, nope).
2) Use or make the adapter and just deal with no infinity focus (uh....pretty pointless since astrophotography needs that).
3) Move the lens closer to the back (would take major surgery of the brand new camera. Nope, ain't going to happen).

However....I thought of a 4th option, and since I didn't have anything to loose (if I can't use the telephoto lens, it's pretty much just a paper weight), I went ahead and tried it:

4) The focus on the telephoto lens has enough thread so that you can over focus past infinity. I removed the locking ring, and TAH DAH! I can focus to infinity now with my home made adapter!

I'm celebrating with a club sandwich!