Decided on 2 minute subs x 20 at ISO 800. Camera was having heat fits - one point it hit 50°, whereby I went and got a pedestal fan and blasted it (down to 28°). Still suburban light pollution, sigh. Focus a LITTLE soft.
Finishing the peltier box today!
Getting there. Not much colour or contrast as yet, nor depth. Keep on keepin' on!
Though, I like this one better after resetting a few parameters in MaxIM DL...
More natural IMHO. This is WITHOUT bias or darks, as I cannot understand WHY MaxIM won't use my files for this - rejects all my darks, flats and bias...
You are right about the focus, the stars are a bit bloated over the diffraction spikes.
Get yourself a bahtinov mask, worth their weight in gold for focus.
I set my camera into Backyard EOS frame&focus and then press the 5x button when looking at a brightish star, focused in less than 30 secs, mask comes off, snap away.
I do have a Bahtinov... looked right... obviously not quite, and that was using APT's focus meter.Ah well, better luck MAYBE tonight.
Still, happy with the end result considering no flat, bias or dark subtraction. Canon's internal magic seems to work well for the most part on these full-frame cameras.