In a previous video which I'll link right here I shared how to find deep sky objects in the night
sky based on some techniques like star hopping and an online plate solving called nova.astrometry.net
a lot of times when we finally find the object we're looking for we don't pay much attention to
framing that object and by framing i mean where you put the deep sky object in the field and how
you have that field rotated and for some objects that might not be a big deal but there are two
very good reasons why i think paying attention to framing is important the first reason is framing
is one of the creative aspects of astrophotography but one that can really change the impact of the
photo and elevate a photo from being just sort of so-so to something really special
and i'm not going to go into all the compositional tactics in this video but composition
is something that applies just as strongly to an astrophoto as any kind of visual art
we should strive for finding compositions that have a nice balance and and ones that lead the eye
in a set in a way that's satisfying and sometimes that means centering the main deep sky object but
not all the time a lot of my favorite astrophotos of all time don't have the main object centered in
frame the second reason framing is important is for multi-night shoots one of the big advantages
to astrophotography over normal photography is that we can add to our photos to make them better
by gathering more data over multiple nights but that only works out well if your framing
is pretty close night after night because if you have even a 20 degree or 30 degree rotation
that could mean throwing out half the photo so the best way to deal with framing
is to use a connected computer to a go-to mount and that that's stored the framing that you want
to use and then you complete solve until your telescope is perfectly aligned with that framing
but the thing about that ideal solution is that it requires a lot of specific gear and for you
have already figured out all the software and be pretty well along with s photography but what if
you're just using a dslr or mirrorless camera and a camera lens on a tripod or maybe a star
tracker in that case here's what i do first see if you can get a lens collar or some kind of ring
that fits around your lens so that you can rotate it easily and then lock down that rotation
and this will always help to be able to get the framing that you want and then second my
low-tech solution to get perfect framing is to print out a custom finder chart based on the
gear and the framing that i want to use so for the rest of this video let me show you how i made this
and we're going to start with a website called blackwater skies imaging toolbox
which i will link in the description and this website is a good way to visualize the
night sky before you go out and shoot it's an it's an essential part of my planning process
and tonight i'm planning to shoot with the canon eos r a so i'm just going to pick that from the
list and click calculate and if your telescope is listed you can you can pick it from the scope
list but if you're using a camera lens like i am then you just go here to the second button and
type in a custom focal length so i'm going to use an 85 millimeter lens click calculate there we go
and if you are not shooting orion you could type in any object here or you can browse
objects so there's lots of different ways to find things in the night sky
but we're going to shoot orion tonight so let's use this and just looking at this what i can tell
that i want to do is i want to include the bright star Betelgeuse I want to include Rigel I want to
include all of Barnard's loop so let's rotate our field here until it looks like we have that
done and compositionally i want basically Betelgeuse and Rigel to be straight up and down
centered the same way left to right so they make a line with that middle belt star
and it looks like i can do that like this and then i know that Barnard's loop is is right
there so i want to include all of that now just to simplify this a little bit and make it easier
to read i'm going to click into this fourth button down and turn off maximize and annotate
and then i'm just going to zoom out just a little bit there we go okay and you could
just take a screenshot of this and for something as simple as their Orion's constellation you know
a screenshot on your phone might be good enough but sometimes you know it's it's better to
simplify this a little bit and invert it and print it out and and i i really enjoy having a
printed finder chart so i'm going to show you how to do that let's go ahead and take a screenshot
and bring it into photoshop okay the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to just
crop it down to just the field of view okay and then i'm just going to rotate it
so i'll just do image image rotation 90 degrees counterclockwise looks good
all right i'm just going to fill those corners by making a new
layer and filling that with black there we go and now let's go ahead and invert
this since we're going to print it out on white paper so i'm just going to find the
adjustment here that says invert and click on it there we go and you can see this is good but it
is leaving a lot of unnecessary stuff that's not going to help us in framing using live view for
framing on live view we really just need the bright stars this one down here this one up
here and of course beetlejuice and rigel so i'm going to go ahead and add a threshold adjustment
and you know that's that's pretty good just the default but i want to include just maybe
a little bit more i want to see the actual field of view indicator that that box around
so i'm just going to move the little threshold level thing until the rectangle shows back up
and that's it that's our finished finder chart you can see that it has the bright
stars that we're going to use for framing up but no extraneous information and it's perfect
for printing out on my black and white laser printer so i can just go file print and choose
scale to fit media and go ahead and print it out on my brother
laser printer and here is the result and i'll just show a little clip of me using it in the field
and till next time this has been nico carver from nebulaphotos.com clear skies