[APML] Another beginner

["Lewis V. Bishop" <lewis.bishop@red7consulting.co.uk>]

Hello everyone,

Another beginner question (or a few anyway) i'm afraid - i've read through a lot of the archives but just has some further questions. Firstly i guess some info about me. I live at the edge of London where there is a lot of light pollution and of course cloud. I am new to astronomy and thought astrophotography would be a good way for me to remember exactly what i'm looking at. For this reason i have started by taking fixed tripod shots of constellations. I'm new to manual photography aswell - have had an SLR for 5 years or so but always used it on automatic so please excuse any really stupid questions. My first 2 sets of images have been extremely disappointing.

Some of my images - even taken at 11pm i have images that look as though they were taken late afternoon - i'm using a postal developer that will not print images but just send to CD (not kodak photo cd but max 4mb images - forget the exact res). I'm guessing that the developers have processed the images slightly in order to get them into JPG format on CD. Is anybody willing to scan in a couple of negatives and send me some raw images so that i can see differnces between the images supplied by the developer and raw scans? With the results that i have seen so far i would be prepared to get a 35mm scanner if it gives better results. 

Is anybody using a postal development service in the UK that will not cut negatives? I've not had any luck with any of them? Also, does anyone local have good dark sites they use and are there any meetings or star parties/meetings?

My first 2 sets of images (had them saved on CD in JPG format by the developer - not Kodak Photo CD) have been VERY disappointing - anyone got any tips? Or is anybody willing to scan in a couple of negatives and send me some raw images? With the results that i have seen so far i would be prepared to get a 35mm scanner if it gives better results. Just what is involved in processing a role of 35mm film?

Many thanks for taking time to help me!

Lewis.

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