M8 - Duckadang 2007

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I'm posting this as is. I am so over trying to process it and get the colour balance right! I over exposed it and I have been fighting since I took it to get the nebula colour right all the way through it. It is obviously saying to me "Enjoy me as I am!"

I thought I'd post the nearly full image first (just cropped out half The Triffid that was on the right side) then a central crop (which is my preferred image), then a close up of the middle. The middle one is a bit noisy, but I just wanted to show the sort of detail you can pick up with an itty bitty ED80 and a Canon 300D. I'm very happy with the detail and the general tracking performance.

12/300sec@ISO400. Dark subtracted and averaged in Images Plus. Post processing, cropping and resizing and quality reduced for web in PS. The last image is un-resized, ie it is the natural size from the camera so make sure you enlarge it to full size, though it is reduced in quality to 50%. Also I only used a 0.5 pixel Gaussian blur when doing noise reduction so it is still noisy.

One thing the over exposure did was to bring out the faint nebulosity that runs all the way around the nebula and particularly at the top and bottom.

[jase (Jason)]

Nice work Paul. Depending on how much time you want to spend in PS, you may get some nice results with these images if you layer them to manage the brightness levels. By doing so you can push the data hard to bring out the faint nebulosity and not burn out the highlights (as these are managed with a different layer). You may need to do it in three or four layers to ensure you get a nice blend. Certainly getting your money's worth from the ED80.

[h0ughy (David)]

wow thats a nice result to start with. I have a long way to go myself. I forgot you snapped off a couple of shots on this one, you mush have done that shot before you did the helix? Tracking is pretty good too mate

[Garyh]

Very nice Paul! don`t think you could get the focus any sharper and the guiding looks good too!!
Like what Jase says about masking and using a few layers to stop the middle burning out too much. but other than that a excellent image!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll give the masking and layers a go and see how it turns out. It will have to go to the bottom of the list though as I still have others from DaDang that I haven't even touched with PS yet.

[Dr Nick (Nick)]

I must say, the colour still isn't quite right but if I were you I would still be very happy with this one!

[Ric]

They are still great looking images Paul and as you say you have brought out the fainter nebulosity which looks great.

Cheers