Thanks Simon and Mitchell,
Simon, the shorter subs has helped to a large degree to overcome the light pollution, still to try a different f stop to see what effect that will have, but with all astrophotography its a learning curve and im loving it
Mitch i don't have a remote yet but (not too far away though) have been using the software from canon to remotely control it. Ive been using the time delay function to take a series of subs, last night i had it set to take 2.00 min subs with a 5 sec gap and to repeat 30 times. So far its working good, problem is you need power for the laptop to control the shutter but battery power in the camera seems to hold up really well. I see your using star max might have to try that one out
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By the look of the weather here ill be playing with levels and curves for a couple of days, all good practice.
Cheers
Scott
An after though, is there a program that can stack the startrail images in raw format (canon cr2) its a pain converting