[rogerg (Roger)]

Hi everyone,

So, as many of you know I don’t have the best results from LRGB imaging.

I currently have on loan a ST8300c camera and am very happy with the results. One of the things, probably the main thing, which is easier to use about the OSC camera is the consistency of image quality between RGB frames. For example, with my ST8-XME when I do 20xL + 10xRGB frames at 300s, the difference in time between frames means there’s variation in atmospheric conditions and focus (even if refocused regularly as I do) resulting in slight offsets of colour channels. I’ve found this very hard to overcome and produce nice images that for example don’t have a bloat of colour around stars. This problem doesn’t exist for the OSC because RGB frames are taken concurrently, even if they are later de-bayered for processing.

Of course the problem is less when at more lenient resolutions (2”/pixel for example vs 0.84”/pixel). At 0.84”/pixel it’s common that each re-focus will result in a very subtly different focus point and quality of focus, hence the variation I notice. At 500mm focus is always perfect and atmospheric variations so small as to not be noticeable, so there’s no variation.

In considering the decision of Mono vs OSC for my next camera, how do people mitigate this difference in image quality between channels with LRGB imaging to not have the dodgy results I achieve with the Mono+LRGB approach?

Thanks,
Roger.