ST-8300 image settings - where did the nebulosity go?
The attached screen shot, starting from the left - a single light frame of 6 minutes, taken under moderately light polluted skies. The middle a 6 min exposure at a dark site.
Cropped - the image on the right is the calibrated, debayered, registered, integrated result of 34 frames - a total exposure time of 2hours @ -20C, 200mm Canon prime, stopped down to f/6.
Is the obvious lack of nebulosity a case of truncated pixel values or is it a processing artefact.
Two things that you haven't mentioned, and apologies if you've done it;
1. Did you register the sub frames before integrating them?
2. Have you applied a screen transfer function - or done a histogram stretch?
The nebulosity around the Pleiades doesn't show up without a bit of stretching.
Edit - I see you've used these processes, so maybe that's not the problem then. You haven't been playing about with masks, have you?
Thanks Andrew. The more I think on it, the probability is camera settings. I noticed during the session that the images had a binarized look about them.