Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
Hi Jase,
I have usually gone for luminance when the object is near the zenith to get maximum clarity in the image.
Given that contrast and detail comes from luminance which has sharp boundaries and that colour changes gradually (hence the practice of some to slightly blur the RGB) wouldn't it better practice to make sure your luminance is taken at the absolutely best angles (just before and after zenith) and then your colour BGR?
One minor problem I have is I use CCDsoft and when doing LRGB colour shoot it names the file with the colour. However you can set the filter to anything so to do BGR it would name them RGB which can get confusing later with mislabelled colour images when you process. Perhaps Maxim allows to you to name the file correctly?
I am assuming you do all the imaging in one night here and not luminance in one or two nights and colour on another.
Greg.
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Hi Greg,
Yes, in the previous post I only referred to RGB subs, not luminance. You're correct in that luminance should be acquired when the target is highest, thus the stepped approach would see luminance collected in the middle of the run (dividing the blue filtered data (RRGGBBLLLLBBGGRR).
Given there are only so many hours in a night, I do find myself collecting luminance on another night. In fact, the recent Orion's belt wide field 4 panel mosaic image, I collected blue and luminance filtered data one night, then green and red the other. As you're aware, imaging with a monochome chip and colour filters takes time. Clearly, if your motives are to produce an image at the end of every imaging session, then a "one night stand" needs to accomodate all filtered exposures, which at times can lead to "skimping" on the quantity of data collected.
Everyone has different thoughts on this matter and it depends on your goals. I'm personally not concerned about pulling off an all night imaging session with nothing to show for it as I know that final image will benefit once I've collected sufficient data in subsequent nights. I've got a few projects waiting more data, so can go back to them when the timing is right. Its the old quality of quantity spiel...I'd prefer to release a single quality image every 3 months than shotty work once a month.
Can't say I've used CCDSoft extensively, so probably not much help there. I would have thought that if you set up an imaging sequence, the filtered subs would simply have 'R','G' or 'B' ammended to the file name. Just because the sequence is RGB, doesn't mean the each of the subs would be ammended with RGB does it? Doesn't seem logical to me...I'm not certain what you mean by setting the filter to "anything"... I use ACP for data acquistion which in turn uses Maxim, but its really for camera control, guiding etc. ACP is where the smarts are given its an fully fledged automated observatory control program. I've got ACP naming the subs with target name, exposure time, bin and filter, along with UTC timestamp so they look something like this M20-600s-b1-Red-0352.FIT. As the UTC timestamp will be different for each image, no files are overwritten/replaced. Of course you can ammend a number like 01, 02, to each sub, but a timestamp is more useful. If you can make the file names as meaningful as possible it saves time, especially when you're dealing with a large quantity of mosaic panels or huge data sets. Anything to make your life easier and improve the data aquistion efficiency is a good thing.
Cheers