[JA]

Originally Posted by Outcast

Thanks JA,

many thanks for your advice & encouragement,

I am still playing with the processing however, I've found that to tease out anymore significant detail I have to overstretch the histogram & the end result is not particularly pleasant....

I'm not sure if you are talking about a single image in that experience, seems as though you might be in light of your comment below, BUT the end result will improve significantly with stacking compared with a single image. It may be more challenging at 14mm f/2.8, but the fact that you are using a cropped camera means you won't see all of the image circle from the lens and hence fewer edge aberrations.

Also were you shooting in RAW or JPEG when you mentioned the end result not being "particularly pleasant"?

Originally Posted by Outcast

I have tried some stacking but, will look more closely at trying that again.

I am always amazed with what a good camera, lens, stacking and processing can dig out. I too have a Samyang 14mm f/2.8, but I've only ever used it for Landscape photography so far, preferring a slightly longer 35mm and 50mm on fullframe for most nightscapes. In any event for your next session with the Samyang 14mm on a moonless night: I would try just as you already have 20 second exposures at ISO 3200 (and perhaps also try ISO6400) shooting in RAW, but this time collect as many of them as you dare. Go nuts 30, 40, 50 whatever.... Then stack them in SEQUATOR which has rudimentary light pollution reduction built in, if you engage it as well as stacking the stars and keeping any landscape component (ground) "frozen", once you tell it where the ground is. Sometimes you get some funky glows around ground objects, but experiment and you'll be amazed.

Originally Posted by Outcast

I don't quite understand the 'Exposure to the Right' point, would be grateful if you could explain that a little more.

Cheers

Carlton

Exposure to the right, ETTR as some call it, is about trying to obtain a strong image signal, and hence higher Signal to Noise ratio, by pushing the histogram to the right hand side, so that those very faint nebulous structures we all love to see in a final image, are not buried in the left hand tail of the histogram or truncated by insufficient exposure. The histogram is pushed to the right by as much exposure as possible without over exposure. But it is all a balancing act you want the lens wide open, to collect as much light as but on the other hand don't want the aberrations that that sometimes brings with it. You want long exposure length but not so much as to cause trailing if you are on a fixed tripod.

Oh BTW if you are stacking images on a fixed tripod you are also getting a form of dithering without any effort, since the stars are changing their position on the sensor (both during any given exposure and more importantly also from exposure to exposure).

Best
JA