starting back from the begining

[garethmob]

hello guys,

my 1100d came and i connected it all up on this fantastic clear night to my astrotrac and descovered it wasnt anything wrong with the AT, it was my PA to the wrong star! so now thats sorted im going to start from the begening with questions as i havent done anything like this for a very very long time

so here goes

camera : 1100d

iso 1600 (after reading the thread about noise levels choose this instead of 800)

lens prime m42, 135mm

20 darks

i took a range of lights, from 30seconds, a minuit and 2 minuits (longer the subs the more washed out / lp driven the sky) so iv settled on 30 seconds

for DSS for some reason when i stack dosent give me a full photo it just gives me a small strip in the middle, does any one have any idea why?

also when i view the individual photos as RAW or cr2 files, they look like they have had too much exposure again any ideas. i'll post a 30s photo as a jpg, but i didnt let DSS do its magic yet as i want it to be right first time!

thanks for any help

gaz

[garethmob]

any one have any idea why DSS is doing this to every image

heres the same image as above but in dss with no stacking or editing

[JamesF]

I think you need a different version of DSS. ISTR there's a problem with the "normal" release when used with RAW images from the newer Canon cameras.

James

[JamesF]

Looks like the current version may have the support included now. I checked back and a while ago you had to download the beta version for 1100d support. Which version do you have?

James

[garethmob]

let me go check, i thought i had 1.3.2 but its possiable my dyslexicness read it backwards, let me boot into windows and i'll be back!

where does one find beta of DSS james?

[JamesF]

Ah, no wonder I was confused. It's not referenced on the DSS website at all. If you go to the mailing list home page at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DeepSkyStacker/ then it's linked about halfway down the page.

James

[garethmob]

Iv just installed the beta and it's registrating the lights now. It's picking up 3000 stars as apposed to just 200 so it must av done summet

[JamesF]

Sounds like progress to me

James

[garethmob]

I'm over 10k stars now and my macs starting to go majorly sluggish lol. How many stars does yours find and what %of stars do you have on?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JamesF]

It's a while since I've done any, so I'm struggling to remember. You can limit the number of stars it will look for I think.

James

[garethmob]

well after 2 hours of messing i have come to the conclusion i stil havent the foggiest what to do with DSS:P after looking at the usual tutorial i have got thses. ones embedded settings (but converted to jpg so N/A) and the other is saved settings. sadly i dont have a quick enough internet to put the origional 7 good frames (out of 17) into drop box an neither do i own photoshop or any other imaging software

but if some one could be kind enough to tell me where iv done wrong i would be greatful

[JamesF]

I think you might need an LP filter

I've always just followed my nose with DSS though. Load lights, load darks (if you have them), check them all then register and stack. Save as a TIFF without applying the settings.

If you don't have Photoshop then GIMP might work for you. Try loading the image in and using levels to shift the black point up to start with, a few other slight tweaks with levels and curves and voila!

James

[JamesF]

An SGL member did make a youtube video of using PS to tweak wide field images which would work pretty much the same for GIMP. I just can't recall who at the moment, or what the content of the posting was that might make it pop up in a search

James