DSLR colour balance...get it right.

[dugnsuz (Doug)]

Originally Posted by leon

To be able to capture these wonderful objects at all is just awesome.

Leon

Agree wholeheartedly with you leon.

[EzyStyles (Eric)]

Originally Posted by monoxide

but to me, for an unmodded dslr its just rediculous even saying that the colour isn't right because its not red, of course it isn't because its not picking up anywhere near the amount of Ha as an astro ccd or modded camera and i don't think saturating the red channel is a real solution to this because you just wont have the Ha data there with an unmodded cam.

Im sure its easy for someone that has all the fancy gear to tell someone that struggles with lesser equipment that this and that is wrong with their image but noone gets out there with the intention to take an out of focus or poorly tracked or even the most disastrous, wrong colour image.

all you can do is get out there and give it your best shot and if thats not good enough for some people then i guess its bad luck

i just find it horrible that people spend hours capturing an image that they get told they got horribly wrong when they have done nothing wrong, it is just a limitation from their equipment.

Totally agree with you there TJ. Unmodded DSLR's will not be able to pickup as much HA's as a modded version. Ive been playing both with modded and unmodded, it is a "HUGE" difference. Unmodded DSLR will pickup the Oiii's in the tarantula without any problems that is why most unmodded DSLR images of the spider are blue not because they want it to be blue. Raising the red channel will pretty much change that oiii data to red. You can raise it but don't overly do it too much.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

All good and well to 'adjust' the colour to red in Photoshop, but are all stars red?

What I see in the examples shown in this thread of 'Red Adjustment' is a red nebula surrounded by dark red space full of red stars.

If you feel you want to adjust the Nebula to red, then adjust ONLY the parts that should be red. Not everything.

The finished RED image looks worse than the original wrong coloured image, but atleast in the original image, the stars are still the right colour.

Rather than me just criticise, here's is a fix you can try.

If you feel you must 'redden' the nebula in PhotoShop, AND you have PhotoShop actions (Noel Carboni or others),:
1. Open the image.
2. In PS Actions, choose 'select brighter stars'.
3. In the top toolbar, choose 'Select' and click on 'Inverse'.
4. Now set your colour Balance to how red (or any other colour) you want the neb.
5. Now use 'Curves' to take the red out of the sky and balance sky and neb.
6. Click on Lassoo tool, then right click on image and 'Deselect'.

Now you will have a nicely balanced red nebula with the stars remaining in their natural colours.

Geez, who'da thunk it that I'd be giving image processing tips

[Gribbit39]

Howdy!

From what very little knowledge I have on astrophotography, an ir filter is almost essential when imaging through a refractor although they see more blue than anything else and you need to process this away. Is there a difference when using a refractor to a reflector?? I have just bought a Canon 40D and a couple of ED refractors to start imaging through, but please don't anyone hold their breath for my first pic!

Cheers
Al