Canon DSLR Histogram Settings Help

[CosmicOrangutan]

Hi guys, 

Just been doing some research and think I have been making a major mistake with my Canon 600d settings whilst photographing DSO's. I have seen in a couple of posts that the ideal peak of RGB data on the histogram of the camera is between 20 - 40%?

I went to check on my Camera and go through some old subs to see where the Histogram peak was as im currently struggling to get much colour out of images. Even with a large number of subs stacked with appropriate dark/flat and bias frames. 

Currently all my subs so far are at about 5-10% peak at ISO1600 and even a couple of test images at ISO6400 reach only 15% Histogram peak. I think it might be the colour balance setting I have at the moment which is just set to AWB (auto white balance?) and also my Picture style is just set as Auto aswell. I have seen that some people set colour balance to daylight mode? but what about picture style set that to daylight aswell?

See below an image of my camera settings and a sub of andromeda at ISO1600 with histogram readout.

Any help much appreciated,

Thanks, 

George

[Davey-T]

I don't set anything to auto, set camera to manual or bulb and set to your preferences , you can make a custom white balance and save it to use for astro'. If you're using DSS to stack I usually end up with grey colourless images then have to prize the colour out using P'Shop or GIMP 

Dave

[Owmuchonomy]

I don't have an issue using AWB although I do set picture style to S.  These settings are not critical. I note you are taking RAW files AND JPEG files.  That is unnecessary and should be set to RAW only.  I shouldn't get too hung up on the histogram.  Stick to ISO 800 and lengthen your exposure time if you can.  Can you inform us what scope you are using and in particular the f/ratio?  The more subs you can gather the more chance you may have of extracting the colour information in your processing steps.  Don't stretch your TIFF file in DSS but rather move it to Photoshop or equivalent to stretch it.

[Stub Mandrel]

The RAW data won't be affected by AWB or similar, just the jpg version.

Bear in mind that a histogram at ~15% would need to be tripled to get to 45%

[wxsatuser]

The idea of the 20 to 40% is to get the image out of the camera read noise.

The white balance will affect the image on the back of the camera as it's a jpeg.
Just set it to daylight and you know where you stand.

RAW images will lack contrast and colour, will look rather bland and quite dark.

[CosmicOrangutan]

Thanks for the quick responses everyone. OK I will change the settings over to just RAW format and ignore these colour balance settings if they are only effecting JPEG images.

Chris - I'm using a 130PDS at f/5. Currently stuck with unguided subs of max 90 seconds at the moment as i'm having major issues with the drivers for my Orion SSAG on Windows 10.

I guess my problem is with the post processing, probably need to establish a better processing regime. At the moment I spend hours playing with levels, curves, saturation and colour sliders in GIMP but still cant drag much out colour out of the images even on brighter objects such as Andromeda. I really need to get my autoguider working as well so I can get some proper subs. One exception was this shot of Orion taken last month that I was pretty chuffed with, managed to get a fair bit of colour out of it for 60 x 1 min exposures.

 

 

[Davey-T]

52 minutes ago, Nukemninja said:

 

Chris - I'm using a 130PDS at f/5. Currently stuck with unguided subs of max 90 seconds at the moment as i'm having major issues with the drivers for my Orion SSAG on Windows 10.

 

 

 

This from Orion site

Dave

[michael8554]

Hi

I wouldn't say Andromeda was a bright object, so your 5 to 10% histogram readings don't mean you're doing something wrong.

As already said, longer exposures at ISO800, so get the SSAG working - you might have to ditch Windows 10, as Orion and many others don't seem inclined to support it....?

Michael