Original subtitles

i promised a tutorial on the nifty 50

lens and here's the proof so i'm going

to tell you how to shoot and process

this photo using only what you see here

no fancy telescope and no fancy tracking

now you'll need a digital camera a

tripod and a nifty 50 lens specifically

the canon ef 50 millimeter lens now the

nifty 50 lens is actually a really cheap

lens you can even get this used on ebay

for about 60 dollars as far as i'm

concerned this thing is the best budget

astrophotography lens especially if

you're just getting into this hobby it

really should be called the thrifty 50.

so what are we imaging we'll be taking a

picture of the roh of yuki cloud complex

that's ro of yuki and there's a lot to

unpack here this is the region of

rohofiyuki but because we're shooting

with a nifty 50 we'll capture all of

this globular clusters reflection

nebulae dark nebulae emission nebulae

and of course the milky way needless to

say this region is loaded with deep sky

objects and to image them you'll have to

go to a dark place

where is that light

dark skysite a place where you can see

the milky way like this one of the best

resources for seeing light pollution is

light pollution map.info now for

reference i shot this image in portal

class 4 skies so do your best to go to

dark skies

now the cool part is your settings on

your camera will very closely resemble

my settings and that's because we're

both shooting with the same nifty 50

lens which is what we call a prime lens

meaning that it has a fixed focal length

set your lens to manual focus and then

set your camera to manual mode for crop

sensor cameras you're going to use about

six second exposures and for full sensor

cameras it's going to be about 10

seconds now this isn't an exact science

but you don't want your stars trailing

you want them to look like this make

sure to open the aperture the whole way

and set your eyes at about 3200 also use

daylight white balance and make sure you

have a two second delay lastly be sure

to shoot in raw and large jpeg now if

you're using an intervalometer which

looks like this you'll also want to

remove the shutter delay and you want to

make sure your camera is in bulb mode

because the intervalometer will take

care of this for you as a general rule

may through august is the best time to

image this regardless of what hemisphere

you're in now southern hemisphere folks

have an advantage because it rises

higher in the sky for more months of the

year now the earlier in the year you

shoot this the later you have to stay up

and that's because you want to shoot it

when it's well above the horizon to make

sure that you avoid the light dome also

make sure you shoot it when the sky is

less bright so shoot during a new moon

to find royal fuyuki look towards the

core of the milky way for this bright

star here called antares this is what it

looks like in the live view now this

star is hard to miss because it's so

bright and it gives off this

characteristic reddish orange color

which appears somewhat similar to mars

once you've found a teres use the

digital zoom on your camera and zoom in

the entire way focus your lens all the

way to infinity you'll notice that it's

almost focused but not quite so actually

slightly back off of infinity until you

get it nice and pinpoint and looking

like this this is an in-focus star

here's another pro tip this lens is

great but it tends to lose focus hey

i need you to focus to fix that you can

use a small piece of electrical tape and

then place it on the focuser so it keeps

focus once you've achieved focus you'll

want to reframe the subject in my case i

moved antares to the bottom right hand

corner because interiors is actually

this star here and i want to capture

this region of the milky way so reframe

appropriately in order to capture the

region once you've done that go ahead

and take 300 photos or light frames as

we call them to compensate for the

rotation of the earth you'll have to

reposition your camera about every 15 to

20 images to help you reposition between

image sets i'd recommend using the

rectangle as a reference for reframing

as long as you keep antera centered you

should be good to go immediately after

the photos are done you'll want to

replace the lens cap and remove the

shutter delay then you'll take 50 dark

frames which are essentially the same

settings as the photos and this will

help us reduce the noise after that set

the camera to the shortest exposure

possible and then take 50 bias frames

again we're going to use these to help

reduce noise once you've finished and

bagged all that great data we'll move on

to stacking where we'll take a single

noisy photo combine it with a bunch of

others and get a much cleaner image to

do this we'll use deep sky stacker and

i'll cover all you need to know in under

two minutes here we go the first step is

to upload the light frames or the photos

so click this button here

and notice how i've already organized

things ahead of time and this makes

things much easier

go into the light frames folder and make

sure you're importing the raw files

select the first one scroll down to the

bottom hold down shift and click the

last one

this will allow you to open them all

but we still need to check each of these

boxes you can either do this manually at

a time or you can left click the first

one scroll all the way down to the

bottom hold down shift left click the

bottom one and then right click and

click check

this will check all the boxes for you

and import all of your light frames

next let's upload the dark frames go to

the dark frames folder and we're going

to do the same thing by importing all of

the dark frames

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once you've done that notice that the

dark frame is imported without the box

checking

lastly we're going to upload our bias

frames which again we'll use the same

technique that we use for the dark

frames so we don't have to worry about

checking the boxes

after you've imported all those frames

go to register checked pictures and

notice the value in the center of your

screen is 80

we're going to change this to 95 which

means that deep sky stacker will select

the best 95 of photos

go to advanced and then compute the

number of detected stars

deep sky stacker uses stars to help

align the photos

here we can see we've got about 500

stars which is more than enough to align

these photos so we'll go to recommended

settings

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now deep sky stacker does this great

thing where it puts the recommended

settings in blue beneath red so go ahead

and click each of these blue links and

then go ahead and click ok

after you've done that click ok again

and we're ready to stack we have all of

our light frames as well as our

calibration frames down below

go ahead and click ok now stacking took

me a little bit over an hour so let's go

ahead and make sure we speed things up

and you're done and this is the location

of your finished file so now you're an

expert in under two minutes now it's on

to processing where we use photoshop to

take this photo and process it to this

photo the first thing you need to do is

go to image mode and change your mode to

16-bit mode

also make sure you select exposure and

gamma

next you'll want to create a new layer

from visible and this is a great way to

always back up your work as you're going

about processing your image

next we're going to do a levels adjust

and we're going to take the far right

slider and bring it to the edge

we're then going to take the middle

slider and actually move it closer to

the histogram we're going to do the same

thing again and we're going to bring the

middle slider closer still take the left

slider and bring it as close as you can

to the edge without going over and

chopping off the data

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after that we're going to set our gray

point so we'll choose the middle

eyedropper and click somewhere in the

background where it's neutral

after that create a new layer from the

visible and then we're going to do a

curved stretch so you're going to take

the right side of the histogram and pull

it up slightly and then you're going to

take the left side of the histogram and

pull it down slightly and this is going

to bring out the nebulosity particularly

in row ufiyuki which is right here

once you've done that go ahead and click

ok and we're going to set the gray point

once again choose the middle eyedropper

click somewhere where it's nice and

balanced and then click ok then we're

going to do another curve stretch but

this time we're going to focus on the

nebulosity so hold down control click

somewhere in the nebula and it'll plot

it on the histogram then we're going to

take that and pull it up slightly go to

the left of it and pull that down

slightly and this will bring out more

regions of the nebulosity and help us

see things a little bit clearer and now

we're starting to see more of roue

fuyuki but we're not seeing much color

so let's go ahead and increase the

vibrance and saturation and bring out

some of that color in ro ufiyuki

i wouldn't go too heavy-handed on this

but it's okay to bring it up

significantly because we want to start

to see the colors here

after that create a new layer from

visible

and then next what we're going to do is

get rid of some of this vignetting the

easiest way to do this is go to filter

camera raw filter

and then go to this option down here

where it says 12 percent zooming out

helps us see the vignetting then go into

our optics and go to vignetting and pull

it up slightly we got some of it and

we'll take care of the rest of it later

next we're going to remove the star

halos

so go to camera raw filter again and

zoom in on a star and see how this nasty

blue color so we're going to use the

fringe option and pull the purple amount

up until we see that nasty purple halo

disappear

this is going to look a lot better and

really help our overall image after that

create a new layer from the visible now

see how there's still this nasty

vignetting one way you can fix this and

it's perhaps the lazy way is to crop it

and if you're not cropping out anything

important it's often a nice way to go

about things and save you some time so

i'm going to go ahead and crop out the

worst of

this now please please please make sure

you uncheck this box in case you want to

uncrop your image

after we've done that the other way we

can fix vignetting is by using graduated

filters so go to camera raw filter and

go again to 12

we're going to go ahead and get rid of

this vignetting by clicking this button

over here

so if you click and drag you can

actually create a graduated filter and

by doing this you'll be able to help

change the settings and get rid of some

of the vignetting now you can reposition

it using the four arrows and you can

adjust the tint temperature and exposure

over here to help blend it in with the

rest of your image

that's really the goal right here and

it's not necessarily an exact science

it's all about making it look like the

rest of your image so you don't have

this nasty dark vignetting around the

edges now that looks a lot better and

i'm pretty happy with it but i'm going

to go ahead and do another graduated

filter up on the top to get rid of some

of this darkness and again there's not

necessarily a hard science to this it's

just that you want to try to match it to

the rest of the image so that it blends

together nicely now as with this whole

workflow there's not necessarily a

specific order of doing things i'm just

showing you the way that i did them and

a way that they can be done so that you

can use these approaches when you go to

process your photo

that's looking a lot better and a lot

more natural to the image let's adjust

this just a little bit more

and that looks pretty good

after that create a new layer from the

visible once again set the gray point by

clicking somewhere in the neutral

background

and then we're going to create a new

layer from visible then we're going to

do another curved stretch and again hold

down control and click in the nebula

we're going to bring that up slightly

and then bring down the left ever so

slightly again

bringing out more that nebulosity and

more of that contrast in the image

go ahead and click ok

and then what we're going to do is fix

this vignetting again by cropping

because this top part is still bugging

me

now before you do anything else we're

actually going to save this as a 16-bit

tiff file because we're going to

actually process this using a cool

program that's going to remove stars so

choose a tiff file name that you'll

easily remember

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once you've done that we're going to go

ahead and move over to star net plus

plus which uses a neural network to

remove stars so you can take amazing

photos that look like this and turn them

into starless photos that look like this

if you really want the technical details

here's how it's done but if not here's

the download button

once you've done that you'll have to

extract all the files from the zip file

once you've done that you'll take your

16-bit tiff file and drag it into the

unzipped folder then go into the folder

and drag that tiff file into the next

folder

once you're at this point you have to

take that tiff file again and drag it

onto rgb underscore starnetplusplus.exe

and this will run starnet plus plus

against your tiff file and remove all

the stars

after you've done the starless.tif file

is going to be your output and you're

going to want to open that with

photoshop and that's your starless road

fuyuki pretty cool right so create a new

layer and then we're going to use a spot

healing brush to clean up some stars

make sure the hardness is set low so

that it's a soft brush go around all the

brighter artifacts and clean them up so

that the image is just of the nebulosity

this may take you some time so once

again let's speed it up that's what it

looks like when it's completed and

you'll create a new layer from visible

then we're going to increase the

vibrance and saturation to bring out

even more color in the row ufiyuki

region we don't want to overdo it but we

do want to make it a little more

prominent create a new layer from

visible again and then what we're going

to do is actually copy this star layer

on our other project

into the starless project

once we've done that align both layers

and you can do this by repositioning

them to make sure they line up one of

the nice ways to check this is to toggle

on and off the top layer to make sure

they line up

after doing that change the top layer

opacity to about 75

and then create a new layer from visible

and once again we're going to do another

curved stretch so we're going to go to

the right of the histogram and pull that

up and then go to the left of the

histogram and pull that down to bring

out more contrast and nebulosity

then create a new layer from visible

and then we're going to set at the gray

point again selecting the middle

eyedropper and choosing a balance in the

background

now notice we still have this nasty

vignetting we haven't gotten rid of so

again we're going to fix it by adding

graduated filters

now again i'd recommend zooming out to

12 so you can see things easily

now one of my viewers i won't say who

challenged me to include the word

diabolical in this video so here it is

diabolical

now i'm not happy with that one

graduated filter so i'm actually going

to add another one to fix this top area

up here

again there's really not much of a

science to it you have to kind of play

around with it to figure out what

exposure what tint and what temperature

will work best

i'll create a new layer from visible and

then i'll once again set a new gray

point something a little more balanced

that looks a lot better

after i've done that i'm going to

increase the nebula brightness and

saturation and there's many ways you can

do this but i like going to select color

range and we're going to select just the

nebula itself so go ahead and click on

that region and then adjust the

fuzziness and range so that we're

highlighting just that particular region

go ahead and click ok and notice it's

now selected so what we're going to do

is actually do an adjustment

and then go to brightness

and bring up the brightness so we really

punch the brightness in this region of

nebulosity after that you're going to

create a new layer from visible again

and we're going to use the same

selection criteria to once again select

the same color range but this time we're

going to use a vibrance and saturation

adjustment and this is going to once

again help maintain and bring out that

color in row ufiyuki

now this part might take a little bit

because once we've done this and created

a new layer for this one we'll have to

do it for each of these other ones as

well so let's speed it up and that's

what it looks like when it's finished

and looks so much better so again let's

select a new gray point to get a nice

balanced image

and after we've done that we're going to

click ok

after doing that we're going to do

another curved stretch by holding down

control and clicking in the bright area

of the nebula and then pulling that up

on the histogram then clicking on the

left side and pulling that down not

overdoing it but bringing out more of

that contrast after you've done that go

ahead and click ok and then we'll do

another levels adjust in order to make

our overall image a little bit less

bright take the middle slider and pull

it slightly to the right

now this image looks really good right

here and you can see lots of detail in

all these regions even the blue horse

head nebula you could be done but i'm

going to do a few more extra steps the

first thing i'm going to do is actually

crop out some of these noisy borders

because again they're a little bit

distracting after you've done that you

can reduce the overall image noise by

going to filter noise reduce noise and

again you'll have to play around with

what settings work but middle of the

road tends to be conservative and tends

to work pretty well after you've done

that we're going to once again adjust

the levels and make the image a little

bit less bright take the middle slider

and pull it to the right

you can repeat any of these steps as

needed to finish processing which is how

i got this

i know processing is a bit more involved

for this project because the exposures

are so short but i bet you'll be

surprised at just how much data you can

pull out from your stacked image and

that's all it takes to take this photo i

hope you enjoyed it and thank you so

much again for watching if you like this

type of content consider subscribing but

until next time keep your head up clear

skies are on the way

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