Old guy at the dark sky site showed me his single exposure of Andromeda and it blew my stacked images out of the water

I was out at a dark sky spot near Moab last summer, just me and my gear trying to get a decent shot of the Milky Way. Couple hours in, an older dude walks over with this beat up Canon and a tripod that looked like it survived a war. He asked to see my screen and I showed him my 30 stacked frames of Andromeda I spent all night processing back home. He just nodded and pulled up a single 2 minute exposure he took that same night. The detail in the dust lanes was sharper than anything I ever got with stacking. Got me really confused until he showed me he was using an old school coma corrector and some kind of homemade light pollution filter. He did not say much, just told me gear does not matter as much as knowing the sky. Walked off before I could even ask his name. Anyone else get humbled by some random stranger at a viewing spot who made your setup look like toys?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathan_foster6011d ago

Wait did he ever tell you what coma corrector he was using? I keep hearing about these old Takahashi ones that supposedly work magic but nobody seems to know the actual model number or where to find em.

charlesj4611d ago

Yeah man, same thing happened to me with an old timer and his beat up telescope at a field in Texas.