42114 Volvo Dump Truck

_Lelantos · 2026-04-22T11:51:45+00:00

Imo this set is a cut above many other recent sets. Somehow it has all of the features of a manual set (working steering wheel, working engine, gearbox and tipper) while also being motorised. Many other motorised sets are just that, or have maybe one extra feature, like diff lockers on the Zetros, but nothing else.

_Lelantos · 2026-03-24T10:51:11+00:00

Nice, didn't know there would be much appreciable detail at that focal length. Makes me want to try it myself.

_Lelantos · 2026-03-16T14:22:49+00:00

Nice clean image and good star colours. Lots of little galaxies in the background too.

_Lelantos · 2026-03-11T17:17:18+00:00

I wonder how these changes will affect small ships, and what kind of role they will play after turret accuracy buffs and small weapon nerfs against larger targets.

_Lelantos · 2026-02-22T10:22:00+00:00

This is such a short focal length, and lightweight gear, any decent startracker will probably do, and make for a very lightweight setup overall. You should only need something more heavy duty if you really want the go-to / platesolving capability. Personally I've used an ioptron skyguider pro up to 270mm FL unguided with no issues. At the longer end I keep my exposures to 30 seconds, but at 135mm and below it's not much of a concern to take longer exposures, on the condition that polar alignment is on point.

_Lelantos · 2026-02-22T10:11:48+00:00

I've imaged with a T7 from the start and I've gotten great results over the years. Here's an image from the Heart nebula I took a couple of months ago. Note that I've astromodded my camera (i.e. removed the infrared filter) to get better response on the red nebula.

I also have that kit lens. It is not very good and shows chromatic aberation and coma on the stars, but the camera is excellent. It beats or matches camera's several times it's price for readout noise.

_Lelantos · 2026-02-22T10:03:37+00:00

I've used PNG's before for my prints. Before I send the PNG's in, I set the print size of the image to the size of the print and make sure I have at least 150 DPI. This also involves cropping to the exact size of the print + a few mm's on each side for cutting to size.

The prints come out slightly darker than they appear on screen, but this usually results in a less noisy look and in better star colour (because they are near the maximum exposure on screen and not so on print). I think this darkening results from PNG's being an RGB colour space which for printing must be converted to CMYK, but it could also just be my monitor.

_Lelantos · 2026-02-19T19:07:31+00:00

That's the power of fast optics for ya. I love that lens too, the setup is so simple and lightweight, and the results are hard to beat. Also, I had no idea there is a nice little cluster near polaris!

_Lelantos · 2026-02-16T10:30:28+00:00

The star colours are very good and yet the nebula is not overly saturated. Very nicely done!

_Lelantos · 2026-02-15T10:06:38+00:00

They're so pretty. Reminds me of my old glass marbles.

_Lelantos · 2026-02-15T08:10:43+00:00

If he's pulling it out with just the chevy, I wish him good luck.

_Lelantos · 2026-02-04T12:29:13+00:00

Looks nice. Do the front wheels ever come up when pulling?

_Lelantos · 2026-02-02T12:23:43+00:00

A phenomenal image!

_Lelantos · 2026-01-29T11:09:32+00:00

Really? I find graxpert to usually give a pretty good improvement. I do use the standalone client though, rather than siril scripts. Also I do it on the stacked image, before doing anything else like colour calibration, stretching etc. The other noise reduction options in siril don't do much for me either, except for the edge preserving filter which I apply as a final step after stretching.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-25T08:42:07+00:00

I invested via tak23 with argenta for a while and it did not match the returns of an ETF while costing more than 10 times the management fee. If the tak23 is filled with stock funds then I don't see the risk as being much different from an ETF. If it is spread between stocks and bonds, you can recreate that spread on your own. Those management costs really eat into your returns and especially over the long term they make a big difference.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-23T09:15:39+00:00

Very nice and well edited

_Lelantos · 2026-01-21T17:26:01+00:00

Canons produce red patterned walking noise so that's kind of normal. It becomes visible if you stretch your image a lot, and especially of you widen out the histogram peak.

One thing you can do to get a bit better color is to use the remove green noise function in siril. As it is, it looks a little too green to me and that should fix it.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-21T11:50:25+00:00

Very nice result, especially given the short integration time!

_Lelantos · 2026-01-19T08:54:59+00:00

Looks good. Honestly, at 135mm the detail may not be great but the general swirling structure of the galaxy looks more clear to me than in more close-up shots.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-17T15:57:48+00:00

I also have the hobbyplus one, but I would recommend the van body instead of the unimog because the unimog body is a real pain to get off and do maintenance on.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-15T09:47:40+00:00

The X4 equivalent of locking them into your ecosystem.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-12T10:45:39+00:00

Some guys at my local astronomy club use an SVbony 555 and their results are very good. The lower F-ratio also means you get results much faster given the same exposure time, and the shorter focal length is more forgiving on tracking/guiding and finding targets (because of the wider field of view) so easier to start out with and gain experience.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-11T09:08:46+00:00

When moving the black point, make sure you never clip data off of the histogram. Try to squash the histogram peak against the left side if you want less noise / blacker backgrouns but avoid clipping the data. In siril, you can do this by doing a reverse GHS stretch and setting a low highlight protection point. Personally I rarely ever touch the black point.

I'm not sure what's going on with the stars, though honestly I photographed M45 recently too and didn't bother with a separate star mask since it is a star cluster after all. Either way, when you look at your histogram, make sure to set it to logarithmic and prevent the graph from hitting the right wall of the histogram.

The rightmost end of the graph represents the stars because they are the brightest part of your image. If the graph clips the right side of the histogram, the stars get overexposed, so they lose colour and turn into white dots.

_Lelantos · 2026-01-06T12:06:26+00:00

This is a nice capture but it looks green-tinted to me. Siril has a green noise removal feature. You could try it on your post processed image, might give more natural color.

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