Shooting globular clusters with DSLR - losing star colour.

[Simms]

Pretty much what the title says, when shooting GCs the stars always seem to come out a uniform white/blue and not the variations of star colours I see on other GC shots on here. I shoot with a DSLR - I just wondered whats the best way to retain the colour? Am I doing something wrong? Is there an ideal exposure time I shouldn`t exceed? All comments welcome!

[swag72]

From what I understand losing star colour is just one of those things with DSLR's. I have asked this before, being a DSLR user and myself seeing beautiful star colours in other images. Looks like CCD is the way to achieve this. Alternatively, I shall watch this thread with interest to see if there's a way!

[RikM]

I find that using DSS for stacking always seems to loose colour. I give the final Tiff a saturation boost of about 10-15% before saving. Unless the DSS default stretch has done something horrible to the final image (happens often). Then I save with settings embedded rather than applied and increase the saturation during processing in Photoshop.

[Telrad]

I find that using DSS for stacking always seems to loose colour. I give the final Tiff a saturation boost of about 10-15% before saving. Unless the DSS default stretch has done something horrible to the final image (happens often). Then I save with settings embedded rather than applied and increase the saturation during processing in Photoshop.

Rik, that's a really good idea, I'll remember that next time, cheers!

[Psychobilly]

Shorter exposure may help preserve star colour.. sometimes theres enough color left around the edge of the burnt out disc for tools like Noels Astro Actions to get it back...

[ollypenrice]

Agree with Peter. Maybe do a short run just for the colour. Combine it later in Ps. As Sarah says, this is one of the big CCD plusses.

Olly

[iwatkins]

Indeed, you perfect DSLR exposures probably mean the actual stas are overexposed and hence heading to pure white.

I've seen advice to shoot your normal subs then do a stack of much shorter ones to get the colour.

Cheers

Ian