Darks Flats Offsets

[Ingo]

Ok, I know how to make Darks...just put the lens cap on, keep same settings & temp.

Here's what I need to know though...do I only need one dark? Or the more the better (ie one per light)

Also, how do I make Flats and Offsets with my DSLR? :shrug:

[[1ponders]]

All you ever needed to know can be found here.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.php?id=63,211,0,0,1,0

If Eddie doesn't know about it, then it aint worth knowin'. :thumbsup:

[bloodhound31]

I usually do:
19 to 21 darks at 3 minutes each at the same temperature
19 to 21 offsets at 1/4000 of a second each at the same temperature
As many lights at 3 minutes each as I want (the more the merrier)

I havent tried flat lights yet.

I Stack them all in Deep Sky Stacker and do my primary processing there. (At this stage its still a TIFF)

I then save the image, exit DSS and reopen the image with photoshop and have a bit of a play with it there and crop it to size and save again.

Next, I open it with Corel Paint Shop Pro 9 to frame and put text on the image. Save once more.

Next, I open the image with windows picture and fax viewer and save as a JPG.

Finally, I resize the image with powertoys for windows XP image resizer.

EASY!!:P

Baz.

[Ingo]

When saving in deep sky stacker, it exports as Tiff right? Does yours also save as a very dull image when you open it? No detail at all if you open it normally, but the detail is able to be brought out ?

[bloodhound31]

When I select all the darks, lights and offsets, check all and hit register etc, I walk away and go have a coffee. When I return I find a very white picture. All I do then is put the darkness bars to either end (Usually), turn both highlight bars right down and bring the mid tones to about half way, with the bottom one slightly more advanced than the top one. Have a bit of a fiddle about there and set your saturation to 12 to 21 percent.

IMHO, if the thing looks too colorful, it starts to look to cartoony, more like a painting than a photo. I don't like to be too aggressive with color, preferring subtle and more realistic.

When you are happy with it and save the file, yes it does save as a tiff. Thats fine, keep a copy like that. I get a couple of weeks worth of stuff like that then ship it all to a box of disks for archiving.

Once you open the tiff file with PS or Corel etc, you can play with it more and save it as anything you like. JPG, BMP, GIF etc.

Any of this make sense?

Baz.

[[1ponders]]

BTW, make sure your TIFF saving settings are set to 16 bit and not 8 bit. The last thing you want is to go to all the effort of capturing a great scene and only have a fraction of the information saved when you finish it.

Another thing to check is under the RAW/FITs DDP settings that you have set your camera type under the FITS tab