canon 6d

More 6D Wide-Field Shots

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / Dark Horse / Milky Way / wide field

Eventually, I’ll have to get serious about using the Canon 6D for astro-photography.  Specifically, I’ve only done exposures up to 30 seconds, the maximum the camera will do by itself (without a computer or other device controlling the camera).  The results have been mixed (I’m only showing you the ones that worked out well), but with longer exposures and lower ISO settings I think it can produce some spectacular results, both with wide angle lenses and telescopes. But until then (and “then” could be a while, given the usual weather patterns here this time of year), I’ll share a couple […]

Cygnus Wide Field

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / cygnus / wide field

I mentioned in a previous post that I still had some unprocessed images from last Summer.  Honestly, I still haven’t had a chance to do much with them, but here is one example, a wide field shot of the center of the constellation Cygnus.  This was captured with a Canon 6D full-frame DSLR, with an 85mm f/1.8 lens.  It consists of just 8 frames of 30 seconds each (at ISO 6400).  The camera was modified for Hydrogen-alpha sensitivity, which is why we can see an abundance of red.  The brown regions are primarily dust and the grey is just a […]

How It Begins

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / Mister T / mrt / Star71

When I first started in astro-photography back in 2005, it quickly became apparent that some of the “bits and pieces” needed to assemble gear into a working system were not readily available.  I’m not alone in this experience – I recently met a guy who, like me, actually got into machining and bought expensive tools primarily to make the parts needed for astronomy. In my case, some of the parts needed were relatively “new ideas” that were not readily available elsewhere, which led me to manufacture and offer them for sale to others.  A prime example of this is the […]

Test Results

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / m103 / orion / test

I was able to capture some test images last night with the Star71 scope and Canon EOS 6D camera.  These were all unguided captures of 30 seconds duration, manually focused using live view mode.  I got 4 shots of each target and also captured 4 dark frames at each ISO setting (3200 for Orion and 12,800 for M103).  I averaged the dark frames and subtracted them from each light frame, then averaged the light frames (without adjusting their alignment).  Note that the “fog” from light pollution brought the black level up to almost 50%, higher than it should be, and […]

A New Camera

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / dslr / new camera

I do most of my astro-imaging with a monochrome CCD camera that lets me use a variety of filters.  This provides the best image quality and flexibility, but there are 2 significant drawbacks:  First, because of the expense of these specialty cameras, I can only afford one with a fairly small sensor (the same size as digital cameras using the “four thirds” format, which is smaller than the typical APS-sized DSLR).  Second, capturing a color image takes much longer because you have to take separate red, green, and blue exposures (and sometimes luminance exposures as well).  Processing these separate exposures […]