The Best Picture You've Ever Taken thread

[Weetabix7]

One of my favorites. M42 & Running Man Nebula's.

 

247 minutes total exposure time taken over 3 nights. Shot through a Celestron 8" SCT telescope with Fastar lens using a Sony 3.3 Mega pixel Colour Super HAD CCD. Over 6 hours processing time.

 

 

Dang

[NaClCrocodile]

 

Taken @ the Cal Academy of Sciences.

 

Edit: Favorite part was that I didn't use any post-processing.

[mihael]

agamura persica...spider-gecko.

[nUgZ]

Wow!! So many great pics here. I'll add my personal favorite. I call it "Bowl of Clouds". I took it in Alaska from an airplane. No post processing other than resizing.

 

[c_k_kuehne]

Thought I would post one more of my favorites with the same theme as my other one. This is one of my 1st Astro Images I took.

 

Saturn -- composed from a 5 minute video (1503 frames @ 5 fps). Taken with a Phillips ToUCam II-840 webcam through a Celestron 8" SCT telescope @ f/20.

 

The 1503 frames were extracted from the video, sorted, aligned, and stacked together to make one image. A little post processing and this is what you get.

 

I posted a 30 second exert from the original video on you tube if anyone wants to see what the video looked like to make this image

 

[halfpint]

That... is so freaking cool!

[c_k_kuehne]

Seems like this thread has died. I hope it wasn't me. I was just trying to post some pictures to show a slightly different offshoot to the photography hobby

 

But if it was me I might as well post a couple more showing all this.

 

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Back in 2006 my son was 7 and I taught him how to use all this equipment and take some astro pictures for himself. The setup is completely computer controlled from inside the house with a remote desktop connection. I taught him how to find, track and guide on a celestial object. How to focus the camera, take a series of exposures and lastly how to process those exposures into a decent picture.

 

Here is my son and a friend outside at the front yard observatory.

 

 

 

Here is my son at the controls doing his thing in the middle of the night.

 

 

 

Here is his picture of M51 a Whirlpool Galaxy. This Galaxy is sort of the defunct standard Galaxy and can be found in most text books. His version of this picture came out better then mine

 

This is 41 exposures at 5 minutes for each exposure making 205 minutes of total exposure time. Exposures were aligned, stacked and post processed.

 

[Deleted User 6]

you named him atom?

 

science much?

[Rocket]

Why have I not heard of this thread before? It's so hard deciding... " I'll be back "

[mihael]

agamura persica.

[c_k_kuehne]

you named him atom?

 

science much?

 

Long story but yes Atom Hawke is his actual first and middle name on his birth certificate. Everyone calls him Hawke.

[andrewkw]

Seems like this thread has died. I hope it wasn't me. I was just trying to post some pictures to show a slightly different offshoot to the photography hobby

 

But if it was me I might as well post a couple more showing all this.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Back in 2006 my son was 7 and I taught him how to use all this equipment and take some astro pictures for himself. The setup is completely computer controlled from inside the house with a remote desktop connection. I taught him how to find, track and guide on a celestial object. How to focus the camera, take a series of exposures and lastly how to process those exposures into a decent picture.

 

Here is my son and a friend outside at the front yard observatory.

 

 

 

Here is my son at the controls doing his thing in the middle of the night.

 

 

 

Here is his picture of M51 a Whirlpool Galaxy. This Galaxy is sort of the defunct standard Galaxy and can be found in most text books. His version of this picture came out better then mine

 

This is 41 exposures at 5 minutes for each exposure making 205 minutes of total exposure time. Exposures were aligned, stacked and post processed.

 

 

 

Can you send him over to my house and have him teach me how to use PHD

 

Still working on taking guided images, but here's one of m3 I took the other day. It's about a 35 minute exposure with 55 second subs stacked.

 

 

As for the best photo I've ever taken, I'm not sure which that would be. Could be reefs, could be space, could be something else (doubt that).

 

I really like this photo of my dwarf lionfish taken about a year ago, but I probably have done better at some point

 

[iFISTmoose]

 

 

 

[Deleted User 6]

shopped. pixels.

 

first one's cool...shoulda left the boat in color too though.

[acropora1981]

 

Just a nice shot of an e.quad anemone, I like it anyway. Taken with a 3.2 mp HP point and shoot, January 2004.

[c_k_kuehne]

 

 

I really like your blending of B&W and Color

 

 

 

Still working on taking guided images, but here's one of m3 I took the other day. It's about a 35 minute exposure with 55 second subs stacked.

 

 

Nice pic of M3.

 

 

Can you send him over to my house and have him teach me how to use PHD

 

That's awesome you use PHD -- My Auto guiding was done using the piggy backed 80mm refractor w/ a Q-Guide camera running PHD -- I love PHD.

 

If you haven't tried this already it might help you get longer subs out of your mount:

 

Turn your tracking on and get your object setup.

Focus and get your main camera ready to go with the exposure run. (Don't start the exposure run yet)

Get your guide camera focused and guiding.

Turn off your mounts tracking and let the guide camera do it's thing for 5 or 10 minutes.

Start up your main camera's exposure run.

 

By doing this you are letting PHD do all the work in making the mount track the object.

 

If you keep your mounts tracking on then PHD is constantly trying to makeup for the slack in your mounts gears. Back and forth from forward to reverse over and over again. This is not good and will severely limit the sub-frame exposure time as there is a bit of slop in all mounts gears unless you have a really high end mount.

 

When you turn off your mounts tracking then PHD is working on keeping up with the rotation of the earth only and not trying to adjust for your mounts tracking. This should mesh your gears in the forward position and PHD will just keep sending little signals to move forward (keeping up with the earth rotation) and never send a reverse signal so the slack in your gears are never encountered.

 

When I did this I went from 2 min. usable subs to 5 min usable subs and that's with a celestron CG5 mount.

 

At 5 min subs I still have to trow away about 70%. At 3 min subs I only have to throw away about 40%. Less then 3 mins and it's all good but then again a decent 5 min sub will show you things that a 2 min sub could never see.

 

Hope this helps a little and sorry for the quick thread highjack

[cameraman_2]

Well here are 2 of my newer favorites.

 

 

 

You can see more of my images here, www.ffpstudio.com

[JoeD]

I post these as favorites, because they inspired me to get my current D40. They were all taken with a POS Pentax Optio W60, my second camera in that series.

The pictures may be of little merit other than the fact that that they are captured moments from an amazing trip.

Apologies for not choosing 1.

 

 

 

 

[Deep Thief]

Long story but yes Atom Hawke is his actual first and middle name on his birth certificate. Everyone calls him Hawke.

 

 

You may not know it, but to some, hes "little bird"

[c_k_kuehne]

You may not know it, but to some, hes "little bird"

 

"little bird"

 

Maybe little Hawke but never herd anyone call him little bird. And only little Hawke cause they call me Daddy Hawke at work cause I am Hawke's Daddy.

 

P.S. Post a pic Mr. Photography Man -- or it didn't happen

[Deep Thief]

"little bird"

 

Maybe little Hawke but never herd anyone call him little bird. And only little Hawke cause they call me Daddy Hawke at work cause I am Hawke's Daddy.

 

P.S. Post a pic Mr. Photography Man -- or it didn't happen

 

Bottom of page 4 are my pics, read the thread. Yes, little bird, running joke with the wife, I don't call him that around you. Duh.

[shiver905]

min:

 

 

 

[FishOnTheBrainCoral]

Cape Foul Weather, Depoe Bay Oregon

 

Not the "best" but one of my favorites. Little noisy, needs some editing. I have PS I just screw it up more usually.

[Rocket]

I have too many. So I'll post my current favorite.

 

[Bishop]

Outside my reef tank, this would be one of my favorites for some odd reason.