Photographing Comet A3

[cirwin2010]

I have some Tmax 400, HP5 and Hasselblad 180mm f4 lens. Do I have any hope of recording the comet on a negative?

I don't have a star tracker and I believe my exposure is limited to about 5s without obvious star trails. Is the comet bright enough to get an image? Pushing HP5 a stop or two might help bring out what little bit of light makes it to the negative, but obviously isn't a substitute for exposure.

 

[koraks]

Between the limited speed and the relatively short focal length of this purpose, I personally wouldn't bother.

 

[retina_restoration]

I expect you'll get better results from a smartphone.

 

[cirwin2010]

I expect you'll get better results from a smartphone.

Perhaps, just thought it would be fun to print if I could capture it. Too bad I used my only roll of delta 3200 the other day

 

[sternwachter]

Back in the day, the fastest film we typically had for astrophotos was Tri-X and we did just fine with it. Give it a try-- exposures up to 30 seconds won't show too much trailing on the stars but should pick up the comet well enough. Be aware though that the comet is getting fainter every day now as it recedes from both the sun and the earth so don't wait to try it.

 

[cirwin2010]

So I gave it a try and the conclusion I came to was next time I try to photography a comet, I should use a star tracker. I've thought about getting into astrophotography before, so it will likely be a future purchase. The idea of producing black and white prints of the start and celestial objects sounds super fun.

Anyways, the results. I did capture the comet, but even at 5 seconds at 180mm there was still some visible streaking of the stars. Might be fine at smaller print sizes, but the comet was not very impressive with almost no tail. The comet became much more visible at about 15 seconds and onward, but the streaking of the stars and the head of the comet just kinda ruins it for me.

I finished a roll of tmax 400 developed for 400 and I shop a separate roll of tmax 400 and developed it for 1600. No only did I push process the second roll, but I tried "steaming" it with hydrogen peroxide per the instruction in the Film Developer cookbook. Did this step help at all? Probably not or at least not enough to tell. This second roll was maybe slightly better than the normally developed roll with the faintest stars being slightly more visible, but didn't do anything for the comet.

Well nothing ventured, nothing gained. At least I can rest easy knowing I tried.