Just for interest sake - a different frame - same camera and lens on a double arm drive. There is lots of colour to extract - within limits. Tried to increase the green channel - too blue in the core of the nebula - but the left hand edge background is becoming saturated - not to mention that chromatic aberration is really bad.
Should add that this and the image below are not single frames. They are stacks of 6 or so RAW files.
For the Linux geeks! Damn good fun!
Used 'ufraw', 'align_image_stack', 'enfuse', 'hdrgen' (pfstools), pfscalibrate and a combination of mantiuk and ashkimin tone mapping algorithms. A borrowed script that converts to 16 bit TIFF files. Regardless, display is in LDR anyway.
The fattal is a contour mapping algorithm and is quite effective bringing out detail. The ashkimin is a good blending option, used with the cone and rod mapping option.
