M42 in Arkaroola

[xelasnave]

Wow from beginner to expert in the space of one thread...looks terrific ...
great effort fantastic result.

alex

[mill (Martin)]

Originally Posted by wysiwyg

Hey Martin,

How are those scope rings?

Splendid!! finished them today

[mill (Martin)]

Sorry.
Back to the tread.
The non clipped pic is much better and has a lot more detail

[dugnsuz (Doug)]

Originally Posted by wysiwyg

Well I had a go at adjusting the clipped histogram, there is quite a bit of difference I was not expecting that.

Here are the two images, clipped and non-clipped, judge for your self.

Thanks again Doug.

WOW!!!
Look at all the wispy detail you brought out of the background.
Well done
All the best
Doug

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

That is a great result, Mark!

Lovely bits of Nebula going all over the frame now

Quite a dramatic image

[iceman (Mike)]

Great re-work, Mark!

[smersh (Michael)]

Love that

What weights (or method) did you use to combine the the differing exposures (ie 1x10s + 2x90s + 2x240s @ 800ISO)

Did you add / avg or what?

Michael

[wysiwyg (Mark)]

Originally Posted by smersh

Love that

What weights (or method) did you use to combine the the differing exposures (ie 1x10s + 2x90s + 2x240s @ 800ISO)

Did you add / avg or what?

Michael

Michael,

Firstly I converted my RAW's into TIF's using PS, and also manually aligned using cut and paste on to each frame and then used "difference" selection from layers. I only did this as I had only 5 frames to deal with.
I noticed some field rotation on some of the frames and adjusted the rotation also. I then saved each adjusted frame as another tiff file.

I had already done black frame subtraction while taking the light frames (in camera function of the D200).

Then I loaded up the images in DSS, ran the stack and used Log/Log/Log on the RGB Levels, and 0 luminance and added some saturation.

Then did my final processing in PS where I also used masking to overcome the burnout and used the 10s image. Adjusted black and white points, Shadow highlights, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Unsharp Mask and finally Noise Ninja to remove some noise.

And thats what I turned out with.
I hope that was a clear explanantion.......

[smersh (Michael)]

OK - You say "Then I loaded up the images in DSS, ran the stack and used Log/Log/Log on the RGB Levels"

What stack method did you use? was it add, average, median weighted?

what's the log/log/log bit mean?

[wysiwyg (Mark)]

Originally Posted by smersh

OK - You say "Then I loaded up the images in DSS, ran the stack and used Log/Log/Log on the RGB Levels"

What stack method did you use? was it add, average, median weighted?

what's the log/log/log bit mean?

Sorry, I'm still new to DSS, but on checking I used Median.

In DSS once the stacking has finished you get 3 tabs "RGB/K Levels, Luminance, Saturation"

On the three sliders of RGB you can choose various methods in which RGB is combined (I am assuming) rangin from Linear, Cube root to (Log/Log), and that is the one I used.

Does that help?