2 Deep Space Creatures

[leon]

Hi Guys, I would be interested on your thoughts of these two images I took last night. one being The Crab Nebula, and the other, Barnad 72 (black snake)

Both are 8 exposures @ 7 minutes, @ 400 ISO through the Tak and Canon 5D (modded) on the G11, and auto guided with the Orion StarShoot, processed in Image Plus, and CS2 for a little touch up.

Your comments would be greatly appreciated, as I'm still having some difficulties with the processing part of modded images, It's all that red stuff I have to contend with, however I think it is getting better.

Thank You.

Leon :thumbsup:

[Alchemy]

the red one does look like a crab certainly more than the commonly named one. dont have anything to add to the first it looks good, the second maybee atouch more saturation as it looks a litttle monochrome. they must look good at full size ... any chance of putting up a larger crop just to see the fine detail?

cheers clive

[leon]

Thanks Clive, yes I have to agree the snake one dose look a bit dull, I will have an other play with it and see if I can't fix it a bit.

In the mean time here is a full wide field of the area.

Leon :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Excellent work Leon they look great with nice framing

Mike

[Tandum]

Leon, are you shooting with a Custom White Balance on the modified camera? I put a lens on the camera and used my light box to get an image to use for CWB and it sorted out all the colour problems I was having with my CLS filter (which makes everything blue) and my new modified 40D red issues. Images are still pretty red but only with exposures of 10minutes and over.

[leon]

Robin I actually use AWB, as I was informed that shooting in Raw format had no effect on the white balance, maybe I'm wrong, but I took it in good faith and went with the suggestion.

I will try your suggestion and see where that leads me.

Leon

[Garyh]

very nice results Leon!
The snake and pussy paw has come up a treat!
:thumbsup:

[Tandum]

Leon, Have a look at the imagesplus tick boxes when you start. Image set process type. You want a CWB in the camera and then set Bayer at Capture WB or Color at Capture WB (not sure which), I'd guess Bayer at Capture seeing it's raw. Color at capture is prolly for jpeg images. See what happens :)

[gregbradley]

Hi,

That isn't the Crab Nebula it is NGC6357. Nice shot.

The Snake star background usually is more of a honey colour from the millions of stars there.

Good tracking.

Greg.

[leon]

Well there you go Greg, I was nearly right. :lol: thanks for the true NGC number ;) and thanks for your comments

Leon :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

When I used a modded 20D and Nikon D70 I made a custom white balance shot.

You get an 18% photographic grey card from your local photo shop (about $20+ or so).

Then take a shot of it around midday in sunlight.

Now set the menu of your Canon to use that image for custom white balance.

Now when you take an image the firmware of the camera will automatically adjust the white balance to take most but not all of the red out.

So now when you process your images after you've aligned and combined. You use curves to reduce the red component and it helps to have the histograms open for each colour channel to help see where the balance is for the 3 colours.

Or if you are not using Photoshop pull back the red with whatever colour balance tool your software has until it looks more normal.

Its easier to do than it sounds.


Greg.

[Tandum]

Greg is the grey card actually grey or is it white?

[gregbradley]

Its grey.

Greg.

[leon]

Thanks guys for your suggestions, I do know what you have said and I have a custom white balance setting in the camera, which I took some time ago, I can go either way AWB, or Custom.

However as I mentioned earlier. it was suggested to me that if one shoots in Raw Format the white balance has no effect on the out come of the image taken. :shrug:

I figured if this information was coming from experienced imagers, than I probably should follow their suggestion.

Now you guys suggest that using a custom white balance will alter the out come of the image. :whistle:

Now you can see why I get confused :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

That's right Leon, you have to set the custom white balance in the camera to custom (from memory) and it spits out the image already corrected in RAW mode (I am pretty sure but its been a while).

Greg.

[Matty P]

Lovely images Leon, they both have come out great.

Very well done. :thumbsup:

[leon]

Thanks Matty, your comment is much appreciated, I am slowly getting there, I think, but it is fun learning all this stuff.

And Greg, Next time i get a clear night I will give your suggestion a try and do the images both ways with white balance and see what happens.

Leon