UPDATE FROM MABULA
I have had a very rough 2 months unfortunately health wise. I was struck 3x in a row with bacterial infections. The second infection occurred after a routine hospital checkup and I became very sick. I had to rest and take a lot of antibiotics. Once I was recovering and restarting work 1 month ago, I again became sick. The infection was not yet gone, so even more antibiotics and rest was needed. Needless to say, it took a lot of my energy and I needed a lot of rest.
Finally, the infection is really gone and my energy is coming back step-by-step now and I have started work again. I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting for support. I will address all outstanding questions and e-mails step-by step and will be on the forum daily from today.
APP 2.0.0-beta47 will come soon as well, a lot of work was already completed before I became very ill, so the release is also nearly ready for you. Beta47 will be much faster actually. Many workflows will be more than 2x faster, mosaics can even be 10x faster than before because registration really received a major boost... all compared to beta46. Before I release it, I will make sure that everything is working properly and then I will release it.
I think I need to move to filters or drive 100km to darker sky.
Imaging from a dark-ish hill in the city, stock Nikon D780
60 frames x 30sec iso400 + 20 each D,F,DF,B
Single (raw) frame and a stack of 44 selected below.
Any processing just erases the nebula.
Any brief tips? (i.e. keep working on the processing, or give up and get the Ha/OIII LPR filter)
Thanks,
Mijo, Vancouver
Hi Mijo,
I am no expert at all and I am blessed with not to much light pollution.
But, if i look at your frames, they dont look like a lost case. If these are not processed in any way, they are really showing that there is enough signal. And thats not the brightest object you could shoot, the veil is very faint in my images too, even with less light pollution. You should collect longer. 22mins isnt much at all. Go for at least 2hr integration time. I would say out of my experience.
I think it may even be possible to expose a little longer! The single frame doesnt look too bright for me.
I have attached an aoproach of mine. Single frame was iso3200, 60s @ f3.5
Integration time about 2hrs. (stacked and processed)
Well, i know i got way better conditions than you. But even that is not much to get a good integration from this target.
If you go and get a lp filter, you will need hrs more time to collect and some minutes to expose your single frames. So i would try to see what you can do without. Get some hrs of collecting some frames at 60s. And maybe get some brighter target, there are plenty...
Hi Sebastian,
Thanks very much for sharing the sub and stack, and the advice to persist.
It's well worth it to invest 2-3h of 60s exposures if your experience suggests this will improve quality.
I was concerned noise and signal were increasing equally.
For now, I'd like to see what's possible with the DLSR and no filters until I'm proficient with capture and processing techniques.
Then move to filters down the road.
Many thanks and best wishes for your own imaging projects!
Mijo
Fixed noise will increase, but for that you need to dither while capturing data. Random noise remains random and can therefore improve with more data. However, exposing very short can be an issue if your signal is in the read noise of the sensor, so as long as possible is always a good aim.
