please help

[daine042 (Daine)]

hi im still trying to get my head around the processing i have an image thats straight out of the camera of m8 but looks like its the wrong colour (its meant to be red right?) just wondering how id go about making it the correct colour in photoshop cs5 this image was taken with my d90 iso 640 10 min exposure through an ed80 it has been unedited and is a raw image

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Hi Daine,

While I am definately no expert I played with the colour balance using gimp to get the reprocess attached

[adman (Adam)]

You've captured mostly the inner parts of the nebula which are a different color to the rest. Try a few more subs of longer duration and you will start to pick up more of the redder areas.

Adam

[renormalised (Carl)]

I would also hazard a guess that your camera is unmodified. To really pick up the reds and such in the Lagoon (or any neb), you need to remove the IR filter in your camera. Now whilst you can send your camera away to get this done, given that you have a D90 I wouldn't want to. If you remove the filter, the only way you can use it normally is to purchase a clip on IR filter, for daytime use.

The other way to get a modded camera is to buy one out of the IIS classifieds. Just pop in and see if one is for sale. Or checkout some of the other sites for a camera. Or, you could pickup a 2nd hand Canon and send it away to get it modded.

[Poita (Peter)]

Or pick up a second hand QHY8 or similar camera, you will get lovely reds, low noise and a cooled CCD, and they go for not much more money than a DSLR + modification costs.

As stated below, an unmodified DSLR is very insensitive to the red H-Alpha light coming from the nebula, so it will only begin to show with much longer durations, but will still be strongly under-represented on an unmodified DSLR.