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Post by howie1 on May 16, 2018 14:02:06 GMT
There's a poster on the FB Brisbane Nightsky and Amateur Astronomy Group who does great eyepiece projection shots using her smartphone. Recently I had to retire my iPhone 5 as it would not charge half the time hence you'd wake to find an overnight charge left it completely drained! LOL. Lovely daughter gave me her old Samsung S6. Saw some cloud in the West at 4:30pm so headed down to Wellington Point about ten minutes up the road and decided to give the Sammy's camera a shot. Turned on the pano feature and boy does it take a sweet shot. Made me wonder where this sort of tech might go in the future? I know she posts up EP projection shots for which she has some app on the smartphone which takes long exposure and I'm pretty sure I saw she said it also stacked 4 shots. I didn't take note at the time as it didn't interest me having never been a big smartphone camera user. To me, a phone is a phone! LOL. SMS is handy. But the camera in the phone was something to take a shot of a barcode, or stock code so the shop counter staff could ring it up due their incompetence in not having stuck a barcode on the actual item! But, I wonder if in the future we'll be getting super fast and much better images than we get now with our specialist Astro cams, and with the smartphone's we'll be getting similar or better than our current crop of specialist cams? Anyway ... Wellington Pt sunset in-camera pano using Sammy S6 camera for the first time ...
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robrj
Member
Posts: 248
home town/country: Escondido, CA
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Post by robrj on May 16, 2018 15:14:57 GMT
I like the panoramic setting. I took this one in Bryce Canyon National Park back in October of 2015. When I was doing visual, I hauled my 12" dob out there for visual observing. It's about 560 miles from my home and is one of the darkest spots in the US. Plus it's up about 7000 feet above sea level. I made a large print of it and hung it in my hallway.
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Post by davy on May 16, 2018 16:44:36 GMT
Smartphone technology is advancing rapidly and the biggest jumps are made on the cameras, the images via projection are stunning and have thought,, wow do I need a dslr when a camera phone can produce such good images. The post ties up nicely , I gave my boss my st102 refractor and az3 as he wanted to see more of the view from his new house,, was asking about binoculars and I said probably better getting a spotting scope,so I gave him scope and binoculars and loves the views with the scope,, he got a smartphone adapter to connect to the scope and showed me photos today ,, totally loves this,, he has offered buy my kit,,but I'd have to take a hit on the price,, so no really wanting to sell 😂
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Post by howie1 on May 16, 2018 23:51:35 GMT
I like the panoramic setting. I took this one in Bryce Canyon National Park back in October of 2015. When I was doing visual, I hauled my 12" dob out there for visual observing. It's about 560 miles from my home and is one of the darkest spots in the US. Plus it's up about 7000 feet above sea level. I made a large print of it and hung it in my hallway. Looks very cold up there Rob! The 12" dob must have given great views up there too. And re print ... what a great idea. I've just looked online at our local Officeworks mob and found they can even do the canvas on a frame to hang ready to go. Thanks for the idea.
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Post by howie1 on May 17, 2018 0:23:16 GMT
Smartphone technology is advancing rapidly and the biggest jumps are made on the cameras, the images via projection are stunning and have thought,, wow do I need a dslr when a camera phone can produce such good images. The post ties up nicely , I gave my boss my st102 refractor and az3 as he wanted to see more of the view from his new house,, was asking about binoculars and I said probably better getting a spotting scope,so I gave him scope and binoculars and loves the views with the scope,, he got a smartphone adapter to connect to the scope and showed me photos today ,, totally loves this,, he has offered buy my kit,,but I'd have to take a hit on the price,, so no really wanting to sell 😂 Yes, davy, the poster I mentioned on that FB Brisbane night skies thing also uses some adapter like your boss. Some of her posts she tried different adapters and it seems many are rubbish. Whatever she has now is sturdy and fine tuneable to get the lens right in the centre of the EP. I'll have to ask her what it is, and what smartphone software which does long exposure & stacks 4. My old iPhone camera didn't give nearly the same quality shot as the Sammy S6 20Mp one. Blown away by the quality when I downloaded onto the pc. Never done any EP projection so methinks it might be something to try out. Yes, where will the camera tech take us!? Exciting. Down at the Point there was a Canon Collective group there - a free camera club run by Canon Worldwide (apparently, talking to the 20 or so people all milling around with cameras). Each local club gets together with a Canon sponsored Pro to learn. One of the blokes I talked too has some new Canon 75Mpix (think he said) fixed lens (not dslr) camera. Talk about new way of thinking about photography! It uses a fixed non-zoom lens Ie Its a non-detachable prime / expensive lens with very high quality. So the deal is ... it takes a wide angle, very high quality image of 75 (?) Mp so if you want to keep the wide angle image you do so. But there's such high optics quality and so many pixels that if you want a closer zoomed image its effectively done by software which crops the image. Rather than by the old fashioned idea of using glass lens and lots of rotating bits in a lens. I know prime lens of high optics quality are expensive, as are uber expensive high quality zoom lens. So this kinda means you don't have to buy several uber expensive and complex bits of glass ... you buy one uber expensive camera with the capability it has of zooming via the software. Interesting. But also, sorry for the long post, he operated it like a mate of mine who is a pro photographer ... Canon apps via blue tooth on any smart device both control the camera including live view, exp time and iso plus instant viewing. He says he gets home and his local wifi network syncs automatically with the camera, so by the time he turns on his smart TV, its ready to review the images on his big 4K TV. The camera has a fixed lens so no idea how it could be stuck onto a scope, but imagine sitting inside watching on the big screen and because of the in camera zoom and lens quality and huge Mp turning your scope into a high quality zoom scope! Sounds very sweet. [Edit: tried to find the model number of the cam he showed me but try as I might the web will not tell me. Weird! He was garbed in Canon clothes and got called away so maybe its not yet released and he was out there gushing (!) in order to drum up a bunch of excited phtoographers!.]
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Post by davy on May 17, 2018 0:37:07 GMT
Yip , sounds brilliant,the shots my boss took shows down the barrel look but you could crop it out,,but was an interesting look,he thinks it's great,what I would like to see is the camera in video mode and see how good it is
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Post by davy on May 17, 2018 0:50:58 GMT
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Post by Dragon Man on May 17, 2018 13:12:51 GMT
Love the Pano shots Howie and Rob My phone takes far better photos than my Canon DSLR. My poor DSLR sits abandoned and covered in dust. I haven't used it for about a year now. I do all my photography and videos with my phone. It is a Samsung S8.
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Post by ChrisV on May 18, 2018 8:27:05 GMT
Really nice. But what does it say about me. I'm still using an S3
Edit: and it runs my mount with Sky Safari Pro really well.
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robrj
Member
Posts: 248
home town/country: Escondido, CA
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Post by robrj on May 21, 2018 14:37:28 GMT
It was 11° F or -11° C. Very cold, especially for this southern California guy! But I had the proper gear so I managed to get some good views. Up there I could make out the faint glow of Andromeda with the naked eye. We could easily make out the dust lanes through the eyepiece. I rarely need a jacket that heavy here but my wife and I did an Alaska cruise a few years before so we had bought the appropriate cold weather jackets, layers and boots. Most of the rest of the family spent the evening in the truck, popping out for an ocassional view. I had mine printed at Costco. It was also on canvas, framed with a simple border and ready to hang. It's 1.5' x 4'. Well worth the money!
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robrj
Member
Posts: 248
home town/country: Escondido, CA
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Post by robrj on May 21, 2018 14:40:48 GMT
Really nice. But what does it say about me. I'm still using an S3 Edit: and it runs my mount with Sky Safari Pro really well. It says you'd rather spend your money on astronomy gear! If it does what you need, why bother?
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Post by howie1 on May 22, 2018 23:51:01 GMT
Well I might have started this thread saying nothing to do with Astro, but .... last night I got out the old 6SE as that's what I am taking to tonights World Record Attempt Stargazing (well, everyones target is the Moon). So I focused it on the Moon using the standard visual back, standard diagonal, and son's WO binoviewer with twin 1-1/4" 20mm WO EP. Must have sat there for half an hour just wandering over the Moon. Anyway, just about to pack it away and thought I'd hold the Smasung S6 up to one of the EP's. So yeah, this thread is kind of into the second part of the original post title ... IE .... the "or is it!" part. LOL. Zero post processing ... just sent the image to my email account, downloaded it and posted on AVF. So, next step in this fun might be the big 300/1500mm XX12GT Dob and use the S6 "Pro" mode which allows longer exposures. BTW, I've researched and found the S8 and above Samsung introduced 12 frame stacking for low light situations in the Pro mode. Unfortunately mine doesn't have that feature
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Post by davy on May 23, 2018 2:18:43 GMT
Well I might have started this thread saying nothing to do with Astro, but .... last night I got out the old 6SE as that's what I am taking to tonights World Record Attempt Stargazing (well, everyones target is the Moon). So I focused it on the Moon using the standard visual back, standard diagonal, and son's WO binoviewer with twin 1-1/4" 20mm WO EP. Must have sat there for half an hour just wandering over the Moon. Anyway, just about to pack it away and thought I'd hold the Smasung S6 up to one of the EP's. So yeah, this thread is kind of into the second part of the original post title ... IE .... the "or is it!" part. LOL. Zero post processing ... just sent the image to my email account, downloaded it and posted on AVF. So, next step in this fun might be the big 300/1500mm XX12GT Dob and use the S6 "Pro" mode which allows longer exposures. BTW, I've researched and found the S8 and above Samsung introduced 12 frame stacking for low light situations in the Pro mode. Unfortunately mine doesn't have that feature It's all about fun 😁
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Post by howie1 on May 23, 2018 12:11:29 GMT
So if you bump up the saturation of the humble Samsung S6 camera hand held up to the eyepiece of the entry level Celestron 6SE Moon image you get the following colours show up (spectralphotometry) ... image on the left is NASA's with explanation of what Mare colours and highlands surface colors mean with respect to mineralisation ... pretty cool.
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Post by Dragon Man on May 23, 2018 16:11:46 GMT
So if you bump up the saturation of the humble Samsung S6 camera hand held up to the eyepiece of the entry level Celestron 6SE Moon image you get the following colours show up (spectralphotometry) ... image on the left is NASA's with explanation of what Mare colours and highlands surface colors mean with respect to mineralisation ... pretty cool. I really enjoy imaging the Moon in full saturation. Here's a couple of mine I sent that first pic, the Full Moon, to APOD and they refused to post it. They emailed me saying so with the excuse: "We cannot use your image as the Moon does not look like that"!!!! and yet they have posted many other peoples images of the same coloured Moon over the years, before and after mine.
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