Horses Head - Carrickaling SA

[wysiwyg]

Hi Guys,

Its been a while since I have posted an image here, but I guess I have never had anything good for a while.

Here is a shot of Horses Head I have taken recently.
Have been wanting to image this target since I started this hobby.

4 x 30 mins subs @ ISO 800
using FLT132, Flattener and Astro 40D.
Dark, Bias and Flats applied.
Stacked using IP
Processed using Lightroom and PS

Thanks for Looking and Enjoy!

[mick pinner]

very nice Mark, the W.O scopes are a good unit. love the colours.

[seeker372011]

worth the wait.. i too like the colours

[Craig_L]

Very nice Mark. Those skies down there must be a lot clearer than Adelaide or did you use filters? Who did the mod for the 40D?

[AlexN]

thumbs up x 10 :)

Very nice indeed.

[wysiwyg]

Thanks Guys!

Craig: No filters used, this photo was taken about 80KM south of Adelaide, and Central DS did the cooled mod on the 40D. The camera was operating at -8.4 degrees on the night.

Mark

[Hagar]

Very nice Mark. Detail, guiding and colour are all great. Looks like the camera works very well indeed.
Keep them coming.

[bluescope]

Nice bright image of this notoriously difficult object Mark .... the WO FLT132 and the 40D are a good match.

I'm looking forward to getting at least a couple of hours on IC434 with my WO FLT110 plus Flat68 and ST2000XCM when I move 100kms out of Perth at the end of November.

:thumbsup:

[multiweb]

What a great shot! Lovely colors. Best HH I've seen for a while. :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

lovely!!!!! I love the result

[iceman]

Really nice image, Mark. Loads of faint nebulosity and very smooth.

[Garyh]

Beautiful HH Mark,
Talk about smooth for a stack of 4 frames! Now thats a coool camera!

[Lester]

Fantastic Mark, one of the best I have seen.

[atalas]

Hi Mark

Looks great,quite beautiful congrats !

[winensky]

NIce work. A realy beautiful image. great colour and light balance. :thumbsup:

[Octane]

Mark,

That is a stunning image with wonderful vibrance.

How much does it cost to have a 40D modified by Central DS?

Regards,
Humayun

[Tilt]

OMG... 30 min subs. That's impressive.

Superb image.

Michael

[wysiwyg]

Humayun,

This mod was done earlier this year, but from memory I paid about $1600US at the time, the dollar was much stronger then too.
They may have changed their prices since then though given the current economic climate.

Cheers
Mark

[Octane]

Mark,

Thanks for your reply.

It seems like the money was rather well spent. :)

Regards,
Humayun

[strongmanmike]

A very nice job Mark of a classically framed field.

Does look a bit too smoothed to me (?) but still a very pleasing image :thumbsup:

Mike

[wysiwyg]

Thanks Mike,

What do you mean by a bit too smoothed?
I'm not asking that in a funny way, I would appreciate your input on this.
I am always open to suggestions, and since I consider myself as only still learning I would greatly appreciate the advise of a veteran so to speak.

So, please be specific and I promoise not to be offended.

Thanks Mike:thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Hi Mark

When I look at your image it looks as if a little too much noise reduction has been used? There is a lot of detail in that dust and in your image this detail looks to have been smoothed out into pasty areas of dust and nebulosity..?

It basically comes down to very careful use of noise reduction. Personally I'd rather have some noise left in the image rather than leave the image looking artificially smoothed but that's a personal approach I guess?

Your mage is really very good and pleasing to look at, I just think less noise reduction might improve it..? Lots of exposure is even better if you can, rather than resorting to noise reduction.

Cheers

Mike

[wysiwyg]

Thanks Mike,

I appreciate your honesty Mike.

I see what you mean.
I tend to take the same approach in my terrestial photography. Sometimes a little imperfections are what makes the photgraph unique.

Balance of imperfection with perfection is the key here!

Thanks
Mark

[Alchemy]

a very nice result, the 132 frames it perfectly. as others have said plenty of nebulosity present :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

That is a really nice image.

Your 40D and FLT132 are working together well.

A couple of minor suggestions. The Horse could be sharper and the technique that may be best here is selective sharpening. That way you can sharpen the Head and leave the neb areas untouched as they will tend to show noise if you sharpen too much. Also stars often look worse after broad general sharpening.

So in Photoshop its:

1. make sure layers is open.
2. make a duplicate layer.
3. set it to overlay mode
4. filters/other/high pass set it to suit but probably around 6 pixels.
5. layer/layer mask/hide all
6. set the cursor to the paint brush.
7. set the white/black foreground/background tool to show white/black
8. set the width of the brush to a useful size.

Now rub the brush only on the areas you want to be sharpened. You'll see them show through the mask (it is allowing the high pass filtered image to show through only in the areas you rub).

If it is too much change the colour of the white foreground to a grey and it will be more subtle.

If you hit a few stars and they look harsh then click the white/black foreground/background tool so black is on top. This reverse the process and blocks the sharpened layer from shwoing through. You can change the size of the brush so it is just a bit bigger than a star and simply click over the star so it is no longer harsh but right around it is sharpened. So you have a lot of fine control here with this technique.

Once you are happy simply click on:

layers/flatten image

and Photoshop merges the layers back into one image again.

Also the other technique is the core area of that blue neb to the left of the horse is overexposed.
Lasso it and try shadows/highlights to get more of the centre detail showing or use curves and some sort of S shaped curve to pull back the highlights without dimming the middle and low end.

Greg.

[wysiwyg]

Thanks Greg,

I appreciate your step by step instructions, and will be definitely giving this a go and see what comes out.

Thanks again :thumbsup:
Mark

[multiweb]

Lovely colours and details. Top work :thumbsup:

[Ric]

Great image Mark, I love the depth of the nebulosity you have captured in and around the HorseHead.

Top work.

[Kevnool]

Up there in the top 5 .....nice work....cheers Kev.