Surprises!
My wife and I just celebrated 20 years together in marriage. What a journey. And for such a big event we did what most parents of 4 boys do – nothing. Just kidding – kind of. We decided we’d like to get away for a weekend so, at the end of November, we’re going to be heading to a spa for a couple of days in Southeastern Poland while dad watches the boys. And in hopeful anticipation, there is another surprise – A Samyang 135mm f/2 USM lens. I’m blessed.
What makes this especially exciting is that this spa is located in a Bortle 2 zone. The weather is obviously a coin flip and that’s not the reason we’re getting away – but taking some nighttime photos is part of the plan. So I’ve got some work to do in learning how to use this new lens. And the best way to learn is to do.
Andromeda – 2021/09/27 – First Test of the Samyang 135mm f/2
Ah, one of my favorites. With such a great location in the night sky now, it’s hard to find a reason not to shoot Andromeda. I wanted to see what this prime lens could do so I planned to shoot at f/2 and ISO 3200 and take 1.3-second exposures from my back porch. In addition to the light pollution that evening, I also had to contend with a very bright moon.
I was really just screwing around and I took about 550 pictures with darks and flats just to see how that would turn out. After heading inside, I fired up Deep Sky Stacker and started processing. It took a little bit longer than an hour to process so I just watched some football to pass the time – American Football. Once complete, I did a real quick light processing to produce the following image.
I’ll probably end up doing a full post-processing of this image in Gimp, but once again, I’m just kind of messing around at this point. Not bad though for only 12 minutes of integration time!
What I was most impressed with was the flatness of the field at f/2. I wasn’t really seeing any significant issues with coma or color or anything. Well, ok, there is a pretty heavy vignetting at f/2 and I wasn’t really able to overcome that with the flats, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out in time.
By the time I wrapped this up, the Cowboys game started and I figured I’d stayed up this long, so why not. I was really into the game and when halftime rolled around and I happened to glance at Stellarium which was still running in the background. Well, lookie what I found…
Orion – 2021/09/27
Yes, the goal for this winter was making an early morning appearance. So I ran downstairs and quickly set up to take a few photos before the game came back on. I was shooting directly into the moonlight so I only took 50 photos at the same settings I shot with Andromeda. Below is my first photo of the Orion nebula with less than one minute of integration time.
Wow. I was shocked when I saw this. Who would’ve thought that you could capture something like this with a DSLR and a tripod? I don’t expect I’ll be up at 4 AM much, but now I’m looking forward to Winter where I’ll be able to shoot this at a more reasonable time. Yeah, really hoping for clear skies in November now!
New lens, clear skies, a Cowboy’s win. I think that’s enough excitement for one night!