New Scans of Old Astrophotos

I recently had some of my old astrophoto slides scanned with a Noritsu slide scanner so I can put them into permanent storage and finally move into 100% digital photography.  I've learned a lot about image processing and the tools are much better now than they were when I originally took the photos.

There are three major changes that affect the quality:

  • The slide scanner is much better (although the lab gave me JPG files instead of 16bit TIFF files, what the hell?)
  • My monitors are color managed now that I'm using a Mac.  However, this doesn't help Windows users who maybe have wacko calibration.
  • The noise reduction software is much better.  I'm using Noise Ninja on most of the film photos.

I re-stacked and processed them to see what kind of quality I could get.  Here are some of the results:

    

 

160601-7+8

Rho - Ophicus Region

    

 

280603-2+3

The Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae

    

 

310800-04+05

The Pleiades Reflection Nebula

    

 

310800-02+03b

The Andromeda Galaxy

These were taken with either a standard Pentax 135mm lens or a Takahashi FS102 refractor telescope with a camera body attached to it.  All were taken on slide film.

About the Author

Sean is a Technical Director at High Moon Studios where he creates console video games.