Appreciation post: Looking at my old Orion Nebula shots from 3 years ago

I was organizing my hard drive last week and found the first decent photo I ever got of M42, taken from my backyard in Tucson with a basic DSLR and a shaky tripod. Last month, I finally processed a new version with the gear I have now, and the difference in detail is just wild, I mean you can actually see the dust lanes. Does anyone else get a bit nostalgic comparing their early attempts to what they can capture now?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_leo2mo ago

Found my first try at Andromeda from a city park, just a gray smudge really. Upgraded to a tracker last year and the new shot shows spiral arms I didn't even know were there. Makes me realize how much I used to miss, even when I was happy with the old blurry pics. What was the biggest surprise when you looked back at your early work?

thomas_sanchez2mo agoTop Commenter

Yeah, it's funny... I used to get so excited about star trails before I knew what a tracked shot even looked like.

aaron_mitchell1mo ago

Your mileage may vary, but that dust you cropped out is exactly it." I did the same thing with my early M42 shots. I remember thinking the background was just noise and clipping it all out. Turns out I was literally deleting the nebula's outer gas cloud. My advice is to save every raw frame you take, even the test shots. Go back and reprocess your old data with new techniques once you learn more. It's like having a whole new set of photos waiting for you, no new gear needed.

shane_clark2mo ago

Remember thinking my first Orion shot was amazing, just three blurry stars. @the_leo, looking back, the shock was how much faint dust I cropped out because I thought it was just camera noise. The real nebula was there the whole time, I just couldn't pull it out yet.