I have finally found the time to finish off a before and after Carina nebula mosaic.
I used the same settings and sequence for both. One shot 11th March, and the other on the 26th. The moon was the main difference, but both relatively clear nights.
Both are 4 panels, each 20 x 30sec ISO800, with darks and flats.
Canon 60D, baader coma corrector, Vixen 200mm F/4
The second mosaic is after modifying the Canon and with the addition of an Optolong L-Pro filter. I tossed up between L-Enhance, and some other brands equivalent, but in the end wanted something more 'open', but with decent rejection of light pollution. I think the L-Pro worked out really well in that sense. The combination of the camera modification and added filter exposed a lot more detail, reduced the bloat around the stars, and made processing much easier.
Unfortunately somewhere along the line I've changed something and introduced terrible coma - but the image scale before downsizing it might have hidden that a little bit. I would have added the full resolution mosaic (second image) to astrobin if not for the coma issues. That will be next on the list of things to work out, along with improving collimation.
Side by side you can really see the difference just by removing one little piece of glass, and adding another. The uploading of them has really reduced the detail in the second, I thought I had it under 200kb but it got reduced anyway.
Thanks Chris - I had intended the mosaic to catch the gem cluster as well. I missed though. After I did the mods to the camera I figured I should just use the same sequence again for a better comparison.
I need to work out a few things that seem to have changed slightly now I have the filter in place, I think the coma corrector needs to be setup again, and I'm pretty sure I can do better with the collimation as well (I'm considering the catseye set at the moment).
