It's not very bright anymore. If you do see it, you'll only see a faint blue glow now, even with a pretty good telescope.bdloftin77 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2020 8:48 am Is the tail still visible via binoculars or spotting scope? Waited too long to try to view it, and last week the glare from the moon only made the comet itself visible.
https://cobs.si/analysis2?col=comet_id& ... lot_type=0
If you're taking a night photo, any night photo, you probably have heard of the 500 rule. Focal length/500 = max exposure time without significant star trails. That is the simplest version.
A little more expansive version can be found here - https://www.lonelyspeck.com/advanced-as ... alculator/
For lenses, the lower the F-stop, the better, but shooting at the minimum F-stop is going to make your stars in the corners softer instead of sharp. For my camera, I own the Sigma 16mm, 30mm, and 56mm F/1.4 and Rokinon 135mm f/2 primes, and I shoot on an A6100 since its the same sensor as the A6400 and A6600, so the picture quality is the same even if it doesn't have the extra features of the more expensive cameras. Those lenses are my go-to for astro. Even with the 16mm, which is a 24mm equivalent since I shoot APS-C, I can only get around 20 seconds without seeing trails when I zoom in on my photos.
So, when I'm shooting without a tracker, my settings on my 16mm is ~15-20 seconds, F/2, and ISO800 or so, and using a sturdy tripod and a cheap shutter release/intervalometer. If I want to, I can also stack photos at night, and if you want to really push the ability of your camera, you can take bias, dark, and flat frames and add them to your stacking to make the photos even sharper and reduce noise.
However, when I shoot with my tracker, I can shoot much longer exposures, like 2-5 minutes, so I can drop the ISO to 400 or 200, and maybe even increase the f-stop to F/2.8 if I want a little more sharpness.
For post processing, I normally just use lightroom, and I've found Topaz Denoise AI is pretty helpful too.