I went out last night and started playing around doing some test shots of the Orion Nebula (M42). I set up the D850 on a tripod and mounted my 200mm f/2 ED IF AIS Nikkor. I set the ISO to 3200 and pointed the camera at the northern skies at Orion or more specifically, Orion's "belt". I stopped down to f/2.8, focused very carefully in live view (magnified) and tried a 1 sec exposure using a wireless remote cable release to eliminate any camera shake. I was astounded by the number of stars that showed up that were not visible to the naked eye. The D850 handles ISO 3200 like a champ, the noise levels are amazingly low. I was really not surprised at this as I shot an image of a rattlesnake in a zoo at ISO 4000 and saw essentially no noise.
This was just a warm-up, however. It is supposed to rain this evening but clear around midnight. I shot the stuff last night around 2am, at that time tonight it is supposed to be clear again. If tonight does not work, skies are supposed to be clear all day and all night on Sunday. When I go out next, conveniently only as far as the end of the driveway, I will have the 400mm f/2.8 mounted on the D850 and will take a considerable number of images using an intervalometer. I will probably take about 100 images of the nebula itself, 50 frames at the same exposure with the lens cap on, 50 frames at 1/8000 with the lens cap on and 50 frames of my labtop screen showing a bright white screen and the exposure set to middle gray. I will insert all the images into a program called "DeepSkyStacker" and let it work its magic. Once done, I will take the final .tif image and post process it in PS.
As always, I really cannot be bothered in the least with changing all of the "Non-CPU" settings in the camera each time I change lenses so the EXIF is not going to be correct. I was using a 200mm lens and the f/ was 2.8. The shutter speed is correct.
This is what the sky kind of looked like to the naked eye..............
But this is what the D850 sensor saw with an exposure of 1 sec @f/2.8 @ISO 3200
I really did very little post processing on this image. I will "stretch" it in levels in all colors of the RGB once I have gotten the stacked image. Using a longer lens will enable me to get a larger image of the nebula as well.
This stuff is REALLY fun!
In the Infantry we always used to say that the Army never sleeps, I guess the same holds true for Astrophotography! I can't wait until my telescope finally arrives!
This was just a warm-up, however. It is supposed to rain this evening but clear around midnight. I shot the stuff last night around 2am, at that time tonight it is supposed to be clear again. If tonight does not work, skies are supposed to be clear all day and all night on Sunday. When I go out next, conveniently only as far as the end of the driveway, I will have the 400mm f/2.8 mounted on the D850 and will take a considerable number of images using an intervalometer. I will probably take about 100 images of the nebula itself, 50 frames at the same exposure with the lens cap on, 50 frames at 1/8000 with the lens cap on and 50 frames of my labtop screen showing a bright white screen and the exposure set to middle gray. I will insert all the images into a program called "DeepSkyStacker" and let it work its magic. Once done, I will take the final .tif image and post process it in PS.
As always, I really cannot be bothered in the least with changing all of the "Non-CPU" settings in the camera each time I change lenses so the EXIF is not going to be correct. I was using a 200mm lens and the f/ was 2.8. The shutter speed is correct.
This is what the sky kind of looked like to the naked eye..............
But this is what the D850 sensor saw with an exposure of 1 sec @f/2.8 @ISO 3200
I really did very little post processing on this image. I will "stretch" it in levels in all colors of the RGB once I have gotten the stacked image. Using a longer lens will enable me to get a larger image of the nebula as well.
This stuff is REALLY fun!
In the Infantry we always used to say that the Army never sleeps, I guess the same holds true for Astrophotography! I can't wait until my telescope finally arrives!
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