AR2427 in very poor seeing... Question about Gamma setting

[cshahar]

Hi Everyone:

Here is an image taken yesterday (Oct 3rd) of AR2427 under poor seeing conditions. It is not as sharp as usual for a single frame, and was one of only a few that I bothered processing. I use IC Capture usually with a gamma setting of 90. But under these conditions, I lowered the setting to 65.  What I would like to know is what are the downsides of decreasing gamma to say 20? I know I will have to increase the gain to compensate. Does that mean that I will also increase the grain, lose finer details, etc? Frankly, my original images always look washed out, in the sense of low contrast. Decreasing gamma seems to give them some pep!

Thanks,

-Charles

[Davey-T]

I usually keep gain and gamma set as low as they go in Firecapture and use the exposure time to get a usable image, I only increase gamma to bring out proms as it seems to lose contrast, increasing gain seems to encourage increased noise.

Dave

[cshahar]

Thanks Dave. That's what I thought. I guess I will have to experiment a bit and see how far I can decrease gamma without increasing the gain as well.

[JamesF]

On the assumption that the default gamma setting is hopefully "do nothing" I leave it alone.  If I want to mess about with anything like that I'd prefer to do it in processing.

James

[laudropb]

Still a very nice image. Thanks for posting.