I've been trying to find subjects which suit the widefield of the Tak Sky 90 - distant galaxies are difficult. Turned the scope on NGC 2177 the other morning and used the highest ISO 1600 setting to get enough subs to make an image. Not the best conditions as I am looking East over Adelaide's lights. See what you think.
Canon 450D Hutech Modded
12 X 7min subs @ ISO 1600
ICNR and High ISO Noise reduction on
No flats
Stacked in Nebulousity
Photoshop CS3(2)
Ah Greg, I take your point and will definitely make another attempt at doing the CWB again - and it should be without the LPS V3 filter through the scope?
[quote=Craig_L;376885]Ah Greg, I take your point and will definitely make another attempt at doing the CWB again - and it should be without the LPS V3 filter through the scope?
Thanks again.[/quote
I am not sure Craig. My first impression would be to keep it on as then you are correcting for all the colour influences in the optical train.
Thanks Greg, I did that before and took some shots of the Lagoon and were mainly green, so I must have got something wrong. When I took a normal daylight shot through the scope though, the colour balance seemed pretty natural with the CWB. But I'll do some more testing.
I rather prefer the original despite the colour issues. Perhaps a bit of noise reduction artifact creeping into the reprocess. The original shows off the sharpness of that beautiful little scope of yours. Are all Taks that good?
Fantastic image Craig
I like the original image too - I'm a fan of red, and as we discussed, I think your Hutech camera filter lets a load more HA through than my Baader filter.
Echo-ing Matt's comment - I exclaim every time I see the images coming out of your Tak 90. They are very sharp and detailed.
Must admit I'm confused regarding using a CWB with a modded DSLR.
If I set a daylight CWB using an 18% grey card, wouldn't that bring the camera back to its pre-modded colour balance settings and negate the point of having a UV/IR cut filter modification?
Thanks Matt. From what I've seen, all Taks seem to be good. On the first image there is no sharpening employed at all.
Thanks Doug for the comments. Yes, it does seem the Hutech may let more red through, but it could also be a function of the Hutech LPS-V3 nebula filter. I might just have to try shooting from a dark site without the filter to check this out. Maybe I should get my 400D modded with a Baader filter for comparison. I really don't know about the CWB as when I've tried it, my images come out a little green with little red on astro subjects, but look okay for daylight snaps.
Look ok to me Craig, the second one looks closer to what you see in google. It's IC2177 by the way, NGC2177 is a star cluster. I can't see it from here, too low.
Ah, IC2177 you're right Robin. Thanks. Yes I did check with some other images on Google. Couldn't quite get the blue some of them had at the top of the right wing. Beginning to wonder whether my Hutech modded camera let's blue through at all.
Fantastic image Craig
I like the original image too - I'm a fan of red, and as we discussed, I think your Hutech camera filter lets a load more HA through than my Baader filter.
Echo-ing Matt's comment - I exclaim every time I see the images coming out of your Tak 90. They are very sharp and detailed.
Must admit I'm confused regarding using a CWB with a modded DSLR.
If I set a daylight CWB using an 18% grey card, wouldn't that bring the camera back to its pre-modded colour balance settings and negate the point of having a UV/IR cut filter modification?
All the best
Doug
No, the Ha goes through with the mod and is blocked by the stock filter.
The custom white balance balances the histogram of the data with the Ha now in it.
You still have all your Ha data there but red doesn't dominate the image so heavily. It will still have a slight red cast but then you process that out when you do your colour balancing.
It just makes it easier. You can do it anyway in Photoshop without it but you need to slam down the red curves to get rid of the red bias.
nice pic 
