KIT LENS Challenge, ft. Astrobackyard

Tonight I'm going to prove you  can capture extremely faint,   challenging nebulae with just Canon's  starter DSLR and kit lens on a star tracker.   And I'm going head-to-head with Astrobackyard in  this challenge. You'll see I have a few tricks   up my sleeve like electrical tape. Oh boy. So this  is a five minute exposure and I still can't see my   nebula this either could be genius or Trevor's  gonna wipe the floor with me. Man, I've never   been so like scared to show one of my images.  And get some tips for imaging in the winter. I really hate shoveling frozen snow okay i'm in the car i'm about to drive down to  a spot in rhode island where i know it's dark   because i've been there before but it's also  supposed to be both clear and still tonight   according to the forecast all right i've arrived  here in rhode island and the first issue is that   we have some snow to deal with in my experience  i've always had better stability when i actually   have the tripod feet touching the ground really  does feel still tonight i don't feel or hear any   wind and that's very good because i'm going after  a very faint object so i'm going to try to push my   exposure so that i can get the histogram on the  back of the camera at least about one third over   from the left that's a good rule of thumb but from  a dark site like this it can be hard to achieve   and still have round stars on a star tracker so  i'm going to work extra hard to dial in balance   and polar alignment to make sure i can really  push the exposure like this okay time for polar   alignment and first off here's a new secret weapon  of mine the folks at hunt's photo and video sent   me this mini max stool and it's an ingenious stool  for astrophotographers because it has multiple   positions you can put it in and this lowest  position is quite low like this which is great   position for polar aligning i so now i don't have  to actually sit on the cold ground i can just put   this down and have a nice stool and hunts was  kind enough to give a discount for viewers of   this channel so if you'd like one of these stools  you can get a nice discount and the the link is in   the description okay here's the thing with polar  alignment that i think confuses a lot of people   especially with the Star Adventurer and other  trackers where once you loosen this ra clutch and   you go to your target you can see the whole polar  scope rotates with the ra axis so why is this   an issue well let's say you have polar alignment  completely dialed in here you know i'm facing the   north celestial pole but then i move to target and  i recheck my polar alignment and it's confusing   right because the whole reticule has rotated but  this is the key thing is has Polaris actually   moved because it shouldn't have if you didn't  bump the mount even when you do this Polaris will   actually be in the same position in the circle  all that's happened is the the circle has rotated   because you've rotated the reticule okay so this  is one thing to understand conceptually but here   comes actual tricky part which is getting a  good polar alignment then moving everything   see so you're lined up with your target and  not having bumped the polar alignment out   there's two keys to this one is good balance so  you can see how i this is very well balanced i   can move it around and nothing down here is moving  the second is don't over tighten these clutches   right so we just need these to be just sort of  finger tight here and then when we get them when   we get it to the right position again we just need  to go just finger tight and then just a little bit   more no need to over tighten them um the same  thing with this this clutch up here this one's   even trickier i think i think i have it too tight  right now but the cool thing about the declination   is we have these slow motion controls here the  next thing i'm going to do here is i'm going to   tape down the zoom exactly how i want it with  a bright electrical tape this lens does not   have a zoom lock so this is necessary if  you want to avoid the zoom drifting just   from gravity or from accidentally bumping it  when checking focus so i'm just going to find   105 here and then i'm going to go ahead and tape  that down so that's sort of like a lock okay now   that i have that taped i went ahead and got  my dew heater strap this one's usb powered   so i have a little usb battery that i can use it  with and this just makes it so that the we can be   sure that the lens isn't going to frost up here  this is especially important with this lens since   it doesn't have a lens hood which does provide  some protection against doing frost lastly i   have this little cheap bod knob mask for focusing  it's not at all designed for this focal length of   105 millimeters you can see the spacing on the  pattern is pretty coarse but it will do okay   for me tonight because my object is right next to  the bright star Rigel that might give you a clue   and with a bright star even a non-ideal Bahtinov  mask like this one will still work uh it will   i'm just gonna probably end up taking one second  test exposures to get the pattern bright enough   tonight i'm using a wireless intervalometer wired  ones work well too but with a wired one i usually   need to figure out a way to make sure that there's  no possibility of the cable catching on something   and ruining the exposure and this time i'm just  going to eliminate that possibility by using my   wireless intervalometer i did put fresh batteries  in it to make sure speaking of batteries i only   have one for the canon t7 so we should get to  shooting because batteries don't last as long   in the cold weather and i already feel behind  so let's take our real first test exposure So this is a five minute exposure  and i still can't see my nebula   this either could be genius or  Trevor's gonna wipe the floor with me   i think it's gonna be okay though i just have to  remain confident in my plan for this challenge   uh let me show you the histogram here uh we just  go to playback and click the uh display button   you can see this is how i evaluate exposure and  know if i've exposed long enough in a single   light or single sub exposure with a tracker  you want to get this histogram peak at least   off the left hand side of the chart and ideally  you want it somewhere between one quarter and   one half over from the left i'm gonna really try  to get as many photons on the object as i can in   each exposure which is why i'm exposing to one  third and we'll just have confidence that when   we stack and stretch it it will be there all right  the battery's on one bar we've gotten about three   hours out of it so far so i'm pretty pleased i'm  gonna stop now though and take some flats um i'm   gonna take the bias and dark frames later after  i can charge the battery because i think that   the temps have been pretty good night to night so  it's more critical to take the flats right now so   i can capture this exact zoom and focus position  as it is and to take the flats i'm just going to   put this tablet with a white screen on top very  carefully i'll get that histogram peak about   half over which is a good flat for a dslr and once  we have that dialed in i'll take about 30 flats   so i'm just going to place this very carefully  while holding the zoom position just like that   and then i'm going to pull up my intervalometer  and get in some kind of position here uh   to to do this uh i don't think i can film  at the same time but then i'll figure it out we're now gonna look at some highlights from a  great conversation i had with trevor jones also   known as astro backyard about this kit lens  challenge and i'm going to occasionally pause   our conversation to emphasize or elaborate on  something that we're talking about so if you've   already seen some of these clips in trevor's video  you can think of this as watching it with the dvd   commentary track uh turned on hey nico how's it  going man hey i'm good i i just got back from   shooting my deep sky object with the kit i did the  same actually the turnaround for how quickly we   were able to use this setup after it arrived was  surprising especially for the weather i've been   getting lately i actually got to use it i think  it was about four days after it arrived yeah yeah   just a few days after and you know it was also  just good timing because uh it was a night where   i got in my imaging time before the moon rose  um like i think it was i think i did like uh   nine to nine pm to midnight and that was  right before the moon rose at around 1am   okay the moon thing this is something that i don't  talk enough about on my channel and i'm going to   try to do a better job of it the moon is basically  just like another light pollution source so if you   go to a dark site during full moon uh you're  you're really not capitalizing on that dark sky   because the moon is like a big spotlight in  the sky basically and the closer your deep   sky object is to the moon in the sky the worse  it'll get and you'll have really bad gradients   and all kinds of problems there are solutions  for imaging during the moon the most effective is   using a an h alpha narrow band filter um because  the moonlight is is broadband and is very blue   and so if you're imaging in the deep reds you can  mostly avoid the effects of moonlight but this   is getting into sort of an advanced topic this is  about beginner stuff so the best solution is just   to when you're going after faint objects with a  dslr try to shoot them either before the moon has   risen which is what both Trevor and I did or after  it's set or during new moon so one uh interesting   thing about using this lens is it um some zoom  lenses have a lock a focus lock so basically   it's just a little switch just like auto focus or  manual focus but it just locks the focus position   this lens doesn't have that so i can just  push the lens like that and it changes the   focus position right so to prevent that one  thing i always have in my bag when i'm out   shooting is electrical tape and usually of a  bright color like this so i can see it in the dark   and i just tape the lens so i just tape it so that  it's it can't move so funny funny story about that   i i too have a blue electrical tape that i keep  in my uh little bag of gear stuff at all times for   for many reasons whether it's you know taping a  power outlet in or something you always need tape   and i knew that going in i even wrote my notes  tape the lens down the focal length because yeah   it's it doesn't take much to lose it i totally  forgot i framed up my target got the focal   length that i wanted did not tape it continued  through to shoot for three hours adjusting focus   all these situations where i could have easily  knocked it out got so lucky that i didn't so   as the battery was dying on that one one bar  left i was like oh should i take a few more   exposures or should i start taking darks right now  temperature match darks as i thought about that   i knocked the focal length i'm like oh my god  like that's it i'm done for the night because   i've changed the focal length there's no way  i'll get it back other than eyeballing it to   to where it was and i was like wow i could have  really screwed myself because i didn't tape it   and i really should have so did so did you  get flats i'd known took no flats oh wow   that's interesting i just want to point out  here that uh trevor uh wanted to take flats   it's just that he couldn't because he didn't  tape his lens and the zoom position change   so there's a big difference flats are always a  good thing to do even with a clean lens you know   there may be a little bit less necessary if  you're sure there's no dust in your system   but there's still always a really good thing to  do they're one of my favorite calibration frames   in terms of the difference they make but if you  don't have the same conditions that you have when   you're taking your light frames your pictures of  the night sky for when you take your flats then   they could do more harm than good so that's why  trevor once the lens uh zoom position changed was   just like well now i can't take flats because um  it's very important that you have the exact same   system optically and with a lens like this  where it doesn't have any kind of stops   there's no way to know how to get back to that  exact same position you were in before so it um   flats are difficult um i'm not going to like  sugarcoat it and say that for a beginner flats are   just the easiest thing but i feel that once you  sort of develop your own system for taking flats   and doing it correctly then it becomes pretty easy  and routine so one video idea that i want to do   is all about flats and different ways to take them  so that you can find a system that's easy for you   and that works for your system so that you don't  have to worry about flats and whether they're   going to um you know mess up your pictures because  really they should only help if they're done   correctly okay one thing about using a new kit  for the first time in doing a real project and not   testing because like i'm such a tester you know  usually what i would do if i got a new lens or   something is i would do test shots at different  focal ratios to see how the star performance   changed and i didn't do that at all this time so i  was just flying blind thinking okay i'm just gonna   let in a bunch of light and see what happens um  yeah it was interesting i i will say i i found   out that i actually had used this lens i sort of  forgot about it because it must have sold it but   actually my first tracked deep sky photo was with  this lens uh so i got to show that to you because   i think you'd get a kick out of it that's really  cool yeah because it is a kit lens one of my first   dslrs came with it and i actually tried to use it  for nature photography which if you can imagine   a lens this slow at 300 millimeter in the daytime  trying to capture a bird flying by like it was the   epitome of frustration a lot of blurry photos of  robins and birds that i saw around me yeah it was   a terrible lens for any type of nature photography  that actually brings up a really good point   a lot of people think if they're coming from one  style photography to astrophotography that they   know about a lens like they're like oh this is a  great lens they try it on for for the stars and   it sucks you know it's like there's often just no  correlation between like this superb l glass lens   for daytime and you bring it under the stars  and there's this huge coma you know those like   all the stars turn into little seagulls and  things and you just have no idea until you test it   that's right yes all the value in a lot of those  expensive lenses is for what it can do in the   daytime and the quick focusing and all that stuff  that doesn't apply to astrophotography at all   you know one thing i do like is that you know some  lensmakers are thinking about astrophotography now   i think maybe because we all sort of came and  started buying their lenses then they've now   started marketing lenses to astrophotographers  which i think is cool like uh rokinon does it   a little bit and um sigma too yup those fast  manual lenses yeah it's perfect for us yeah   cool so i guess i could say the the the f ratio  that i shot with and so i stopped down to f 6.3   on the 75 to 300 millimeter lens uh how about  you did you shoot wide open or did you uh stop   down as well i shot wide open yeah i mean this  might give a another clue but i wanted i wanted   as many photons on this object as possible and so  i didn't want to stop down and also my style of   processing i know that i can deal with stars being  a little wonky um so i'm less concerned about   stopping down to get really good star performance  because i know that i'd rather sort of deal with   it in post processing because i'm a very like  heavy post processor i do a lot on the image   that's a great point so the settings that you  choose you know others might say well you know   what i think it would be better if you did this  but it's like well no based on my processing style   you'd rather sacrifice some star bloat for more  photons on your sounding like a very faint deep   sky object um yeah so yeah it's that makes a lot  of sense to me i figured um stopping down one stop   might sharpen things up a little bit because  i was scared these stars were gonna be   really really bad and i was pleasantly surprised  at the fact that they weren't they were totally   acceptable especially considering this is a very  budget lens even though everything that trevor and   i are talking about in this section is is correct  i do think that once you get some experience with   astrophotography you'll realize what works for you  and what style of processor you are on the other   hand with this particular lens i think trevor was  completely right in retrospect after we saw each   other's images to stop it down a stop okay i guess  it's time to uh to show you my picture and uh i   i i spent about i would say about five  hours processing maybe a little more   a lot yesterday a lot this like a little bit  more this morning with a fresh pair of eyes and   i've honestly i've been staring at it for too  long so um hopefully when you see it for the   first time you'll you'll be amazed but i think  i'm just tired of looking at it at this point   um but i i'm i can at least say that you know  what i've done pretty well for the amount   of data that i actually collected uh  okay so i'm going to share my screen now nice wow did we shoot the same target yes we  did shoot the same target come on we took a   very okay and we took very different takes on  it which i am so glad about and uh yours looks   amazing though trevor this is really well done i  i appreciate that and this is also my biggest fear   that we'd have a direct head-to-head comparison  of my processing skills versus yours because i   know you're going to win that battle oh no i know  they're just very they're just very differently   i i went for uh a different scene and and i also  brought i tried to bring out the other stuff there   that is i really shouldn't have because my picture  got so noisy because i was going after stuff   that's actually even fainter than the witch head  the witch head is the brightest object in my scene   while you just focused on the witch head which is  actually much smarter that's really what i should   have done um so it's really just a strategy thing  and you i think your strategy worked out better one thing i really wasn't happy with was  the way these yellow stars turned out inside   the witch head and as as i'm sure you did too  there was a lot of selective masking and curved   stretching of specific areas of the image and i  really pulled up the dust for the witch's head so   you could really see it um and unfortunately in  that process i did bring some stars with me and   then there was some minimizing afterwards and yeah  it was a it was a it was quite the process to to   get it here and i still feel like it's a little  too punchy and contrasty where it's just like   boom you see the shape of the witch's head there  where i wish there was more of the subtle dust in   the area that i'm sure i'm gonna see in your your  image well it's funny because i mean we always   we always see someone else's image and we're  like oh i wish i would have done it like that   because i mean because to me i saw this and i  was like oh his has so much more punch than mine   and you and you know exactly where  to look i like the composition better   i like that it's you know i like the wide  screen because i went completely different with   composition and so it's just it's one of those  things where it's like whenever i see someone   else's image i'm like oh i wish i would  have done it that way but um you know i do   and the other funny thing is like we're  always our worst critic and when you   i didn't notice that thing you were telling me  about how you brought up the star you couldn't you   brought the stars with the nebula and so then they  look a little bit different than the other stars   and i didn't notice that until you pointed it out  and then of course because you pointed it out i   can see it now but it's like if you hadn't said  anything i probably wouldn't have noticed that   that's right yeah we look at images um you know  from the standpoint of like i've been looking at   this for six hours so yeah i've noticed every  little thing about it um so yeah now i really   can't wait to see yours and what you've done but  of course there's that bright star uh rigel it   is right and so there was my focusing point and  you can see some uh our artifacts next to it uh   thanks to this you know budget lens we're using  but overall the stars looked a lot better than i   thought they would uh with this lens and uh yeah  so there you go that's why i chose this target a   reflection nebula those really cool blues and  the dust all the things that doesn't require   an astro modified sensor i haven't shot the  witch head nebula in i think like nine years   so it was something i wanted to do again and i  just thought it would be a great uh choice for   this combo so and when i said you know it's  not necessarily the the crowd pleaser object   um when i showed my wife this for the first time  and uh i said this is what i shot last night and   she's like that's it like that's what you shot  like she's expecting to see a really beautiful   like rosette nebula or something and i was like  no hopefully people appreciate how difficult this   target actually is it's it's good it's it's a  hard yeah it's a hard balance because it's like   you know i i'm this exact same way it's like  if you're trying to please astrophotographers   witchhead is is where you go because it's  like you we recognize this is a hard thing   it's like it's like a dusty reflection  nebula it's so dim that you can't see it   in a single exposure or you if you can you could  barely see it i don't know if you could but like   so framing it you're like the first time i saw is  the first time i saw it is when i actually put it   into photoshop and stretched a single exposure  i could not see it on the display screen at all   but i knew it was there because of the the  star pattern and and speaking of that this   this field actually has a very very useful star  pattern configuration around it for reference   not just just Rigel but these other three by the  top here and the one right next to it so they made   framing this target actually a lot easier than it  could have been yeah and just to go back to Rigel   another thing is like it's just it's just makes it  so much easier if you have a really bright star in   your field to focus on i know we've already talked  about this but Rigel is a very bright star it's   it's like in the winter sky it's like Betelgeuse,  Rigel and Sirius those are the three brightest   and so this is a very bright star and you so you  can just put your botnet mask on you might be able   to even see the pattern in live view if not you  could take a one second exposure and you'll see it   um absolutely and i did try to manually dither  the images uh a little bit so i use the actual   um the slow motion controls on the star adventure  just shifting the frame ever so slightly between   every say 10 shots or so i don't know if that  made a difference in terms of the the noise after   stacking uh but it was something a little trick  i tried to just help deal with some of that noise   as opposed to and also more like actually more for  avoiding walking noise or something uh that if i   didn't move it over time that could have created  a noise pattern that i wanted to avoid so i don't   know if you you did anything like that i didn't  i was so concerned about um messing up my polar   alignment like i said earlier that uh i was just  i wasn't gonna touch the mount i i was only trying   to touch just the lens to to focus or to check  focus but i was i didn't want to mess anything   with the mount so i i didn't do any manual  dithering that's actually a technique i've never   tried i really should because i bet it does help  yeah i don't think it could hurt uh unless yeah   you do throw off your polar alignment which makes  a lot of sense because you were shooting longer   exposures so yeah for you to to lose five minutes  at a time you you really had to just let it you   know get it right and leave it as long as possible  so yeah i'm ready to see your image now and uh i   still don't know what focal length you shot at or  how you framed it so i'm really excited to see it Oh man here we go you did okay so Rigel almost  near the center with all the surrounding dust   and you even got some of the red hydrogen  from a stock camera pulled out of there   yeah it's pretty noisy but that's the  that's the that's the tip of Barnard's loop   so Barnard's loop extends to Rigel basically and  then goes all the way up to almost Betelgeuse   it's this huge hydrogen bubble  around the Orion constellation   and so i just think that getting a little bit  of Barnard's loop in there is sort of cool   i cannot can you believe that we shot the same  same object it's insane yeah like sir there's   you know unlimited amount of targets in the  night sky i mean to narrow it down to the you   know the bright stuff i guess but still i just  can't believe we showed the same target so one   thing that's interesting to see is that um because  your rigel is closer to the center of the frame   that halo is more central whereas it's hanging  off the side in mind which makes sense right   because it's near the center so that's cool to  see yes and actually that that was in my plan   mostly just because i was like okay i know that  the whole witch head is going to be in at 105   millimeter focal length if i just center rigel  so then i knew that i could very quickly frame   it up too and but and i wasn't even thinking about  the halo but you're right on a on a lens like this   where you're going to have halos if you can get  the bright star centered and it works with your   composition then you'll have a very centered  halo and that i think it does look better   so and deep sky stacker you use to to stack  right right yeah so i mean i think that you know   we limited ourselves to deep sky  stacker photoshop and starnet if we   needed it but i really don't think that um any  techniques or you know using pixinsight or any   anything like that could have really done too  much more to this data that we collected um i mean   nothing that we like we could have maybe smooth  things out a little bit more but i mean it is   what it is it was you know three hours of data  of some faint nebulosity shot with a stock dslr   camera uncooled yeah and it because we were both  going from dark skies you know and i didn't have   gradient issues either so i didn't i really didn't  i didn't do any gradient extraction for with this   i just took it out of deep sky stacker brought  it in balanced the color channels and then and   then went into processing the the the reason that  i often like siril or pixinsight is because they   have these really nice gradient extraction tools  if you're shooting from a light polluted place but   from a dark sky you really you can you can just  do dss and photoshop and it works just as well   yeah it was a portal class 4 site that i drove out  to for this project as well and i mean this i like   i could not attempt this from home in the backyard  um in the portal class seven skies it would just   be um i would need at least you know quadruple  the exposure time to get what i got and that was   just a practicality thing right like um it's not  to say that it can't be done in a light polluted   area but we were shooting without filters and uh  with limited time so i i'm pretty impressed with   you know what both of us were able to achieve  with this system in a limited amount of time   and it's really cool to see that we shot the same  target but in a very different way so cool to see You've now seen what Trevor and i could do  with just a kit lens and a stock DSLR and   like Trevor, I was really pleased with our  results but i want to see what you can do   you can share your photos taken with the kit lens  with me by tagging me on instagram and use the   hashtag kit lens challenge i plan to make more  videos using this kit including the other lens   that came with it which is the 18 to 55 and if  you share your photos with me i may feature them   in a future video. Well, Till next time, this has  been Nico Carver, nebulaphotos.com, Clear Skies!

Channel: Nebula Photos

Views: 52,326

Keywords: kit lens photography, kit lens, astrophotography, dslr astrophotography, trevor jones, astrobackyard, photoshop, deepskystacker, nebula, nebula photography, beginner astrophotography, beginner astro, sky-watcher star adventurer, canon t7, canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 iii, nebula photos, nico carver

Id: ITe0VI02t-8

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021