Larry, thanks for the "tutorial". I will be getting my Astrotracer next
week so it should help a lot.
Is it OK for me to post on another forum?
Alan C
On 25-Jul-20 11:23 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
Now that Neowise is pretty much gone, I think I've learned a lot of what I
needed a week and a half ago to photograph it. On the bright side, what I've
learened so far will likely come in handy for future attempts at photographing
astronomical events.
These notes are just a brain dump, I've almost certainly missed a lot, they
need to be flushed out, but I bet that with the propensity for folks on the net
to correct what they perceive as mistakes, just posting these notes should gain
me mostly helpful advice back threefold. I won't estimate how much unhelpful
advice and snide comments I'm likely to get in addition.
The earlier/more you do prep the better
Get all gear together first
bring masking tape to lock focus
focus on jupiter or similar
Bring a second tripod to aim at focus point
bring spares
Most important is clarity of skies
speed of lens is almost more important than length
Best results are astrotracer at shortest period, wish it went faster than 10
seconds
Ball heads suck. What I really want is tripod head that adjusts with cranks.
Make sure all quick release mounts point in same direction
need a spotting scope or laser pointer mounted in hot shoe (but it has to be
precise)
laser pointer would likely mess things up for other people
Really need real equatorial mount
No matter how well I do, the hubble or equivalent will do better go for artistic
Make a checklist: calibrate astrotracer, lock down tripod head, gear list,
right focal length for mf lenses
Use skymaps or equivalent to scout places before hand.
Computational photography will continue to get better, but can't go back and
reshoot, get darkfield and make raw images best
When using astrotracer, set external intervalometer at 1 second,
Need stacking software
Need slideshow/timelapse software
wide AoV of K-1 very useful, particularly for finding objects at same focal
length
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