Canon 100D modification

[Dinu Adrian]

I am using a Canon 100D to take D.S.O images and I would like to take it's IR/UV cut filter out so that I would be able to get better shots of galaxies and emission nebulae. The problem is that I couldn't find any place to get my camera modified at, which means that I have to do it myself. I am rather reluctant to do that because there is a very high chance of braking it. I would be thankful if you could give me some sort of guide on how to do this or if you could tell me if there is someone who can modify it for me, I live in Romania, so... yeah, I don't think it's much hope to get someone to modify it, but you never know. Thanks!

Adrian

[michael8554]

It looks as though Astronomiser.co.uk mod the 100D, but I'm not sure if they do a non-UK service

Michael

 

[wxsatuser]

The Canon 100D has the same colour responce as the 7DMKII and the latter does very well on nebulae.

One thing we have to remember when modding, is it just makes the red nebulae redder.
It also cuts the other colours found in nebulae, they are not just red.

It's fine if you want this but it does give a false impression of the overall colours.

Here is a 7DMKII image of the Flaming Star area, with the non modded camera that shows a lot of different
colours, not just red in every thing. In a modded camera the orangey brown dust would be red, for instance.

 

[Dinu Adrian]

Thank you! Well, I have to say that even with the unmodified camera I have problems with the color of the objects. I'm observing form a light polluted area and I usually have to make the image black&white in Ps CS6 to take the light pollution out. I've observed twice outside the city with a friend and saw that with no light pollution the noise tends to be rather green, probably because there are more green pixels, as  I've found it is the case with many sensors. However, when I imaged from the city, the noise was suppressed by light pollution and the sky appeared more like red and orange due to sodium lamps. The images show a 20s exposure and the final one which is 21 minutes of exposure.

[Dinu Adrian]

Do I need to have longer exposure times in order to get the color or is it a matter of processing?

[Dinu Adrian]

8 hours ago, michael8554 said:

It looks as though Astronomiser.co.uk mod the 100D, but I'm not sure if they do a non-UK service

Michael

 

Thanks. It's a good idea, I'll have to see the price and decide what to do. 

[Filroden]

You should be able to handle the effects of light pollution through processing. Take a look at the free trial of the GradientXTerminator plug in for Photoshop. It should help remove the background gradient and colour cast.

You can also adjust the colour cast yourself using levels applied to the three colour channels individually so that their left hand peaks all line up. There are quite a few good YouTube tutorials on using levels and curves to adjust colour.

[Dinu Adrian]

Thanks. I'll give it a go!

[wxsatuser]

1 hour ago, Dinu Adrian said:

Do I need to have longer exposure times in order to get the color or is it a matter of processing?

No, it's in the processing.
Remember most dso are very faint and in some cases there are very few photons hitting the sensor.

My image above was made from 28 x 120sec subs and I have bad LP, I do use an LP filter, Astronomik CLS clip filter.

 

[wxsatuser]

1 hour ago, Filroden said:

You should be able to handle the effects of light pollution through processing. Take a look at the free trial of the GradientXTerminator plug in for Photoshop. It should help remove the background gradient and colour cast.

You can also adjust the colour cast yourself using levels applied to the three colour channels individually so that their left hand peaks all line up. There are quite a few good YouTube tutorials on using levels and curves to adjust colour.

As long as the process subtracts the LP it's ok, any other process is incorrect.
It's added light so must be subtracted.

One other thing, histogram equalisation will not give correct colours with a dslr, it's similar to Auto white balance.
If you want true colours the processing should be similar to normal photography and there you won't see histogram equalisation.

 

[Dinu Adrian]

That's great, thanks!