M42 - 31.1.2010 (first Guided image)

[Carole]

plug the camera in to the pc. (Yup more cables )and have a look at the image on the laptop screen.

I'm already plugged into the laptop, and as I have said before, M42 is too faint to show up on the screen in live view.  I can only look at it when I've grabbed a short image, and even then I don't think it is sufficiently large enough to be able to judge whether it's truly in focus.

I have now had a go at trying to process this in colour.
I've made the image a little smaller so the lack of focus is not quite so obvious.



Carole

[Mac]

I can only look at it when I've grabbed a short image, and even then I don't think it is sufficiently large enough to be able to judge whether it's truly in focus.

Er. why.

Granted live view might be a tad small when looking at the back of the camera, but that also has a zoom function.

But when you have taken a short exposure at high iso,
say 10secs at 800 or even 1600.
The image size your camera produces will be HUGE 4272 x 2848

so by using the laptop screen and zoomin in to the image you will be able to see if its in focus or not..

Your camera is a 12 megapixel camera!!!
Your laptop screen if its 1024 * 768 which is the average size is only 1Megapixels so the image will be huge!!

Heres a 12 Megapixel image (Highly compresed) sorry for the large post,

Your images should be the same size as this one!!


so you should be able to see one of the stars in the image and easily see if it is in focus with the focus mask.

If your image in not this size or even close.
Check that you have the correct settings for your camera.
Raw + Jpg (use the jpg so that you can see if its in focus)

Make sure the Jpg is set to large + fine.

If your going to DSC in a few weeks, im sure we can nail this focus in one hit.

Mac.

[Carole]

Ah ha!!!

Raw + Jpg (use the jpg so that you can see if its in focus)

I think this has hit the nail on the head.  I've had the camera set on RAW only, and can only look at images in Digital photo professional as no other programmes on my laptop will open in RAW.  The images are not that big when you open them (see example below).

YES, if I take the focussing images in JPG I can open and zoom in any other program on my laptop.  

Never thought of that, will try that next time.  All a big new learning curve, and learning by my mistakes.
Thanks Mac.

Just to show you what I was looking at in Digital photo professional and you can't zoom in any more than this - this is a single frame, perhaps you can see now why I could not tell it was out of focus.


Yes planning to go to DSC weather permitting.  i.e. not going if it's freezing.
Don't mind freezing for a few hours to do imaging if there's a warm house to come back into but can't face a whole weekend of freezing.

Carole