This irritates the crap out of me Eric. You do stuff with a DSLR (and in JPEG, you have to be KIDDING) thats just should be ILLEGAL. Your statement "CCD killer" assumes a given image comparison of an Astrocam and a DSLR image by the same average imager to illustrate what can be done with a given average skill set. In this case, a DSLR pic may well look similar to an Astrocam. You have only presented DSLR pics to demonstrate your skill. A fairer comparison would be YOU presenting a DSLR pic AND a 16meg US$16K cam pic, side by side. Then, you would see the difference. For a start, DSLR JEGS are 8 bit, and Astrocams are 16bit, that alone would, if you applied the skills you have, produce a spine chilling result, I dread the day
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BTW, as Mike says, try RAW (at least 12 bit), I await with intrepidation at the result.