Stacking

[25585]

Being an almost absolute beginner with digital photography, the only stacking I have done is hay bales, boxes and luggage.

As this is the beginners forum....

Please advise what software, OS, hardware and anything else. I usually save photos as RAW, but like adding a little grain now & again to imitate celluloid.

[happy-kat]

Are you Windows or Mac?

[25585]

1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

Are you Windows or Mac?

Both. Windows 7 64 bit, Mac latest. 

[Grierson]

Do you intend to use your Pentax (or other DSLR) or a dedicated CCD/CMOS camera? BackyardEOS would be my choice for a Canon DSLR but I’m not sure about a Pentax. Deep Sky Stacker would be my choice for stacking.

[25585]

Fujinon. I'm looking around with an emphasis on user friendly.

[happy-kat]

@The Admiral will deep sky stacker work with these fuji files do you think?

[The Admiral]

I think it rather depends on the model of Fujifilm camera. If the sensor has a standard Bayer array then I would imagine, quite probably. On the other hand, I wasn't able to get the Fuji X-Trans raw files to stack in DSSs, because they don't use the standard Bayer filter array. My solution was to convert the RAFs into DNGs using the free Adobe DNG converter, and stack those. I now use AstroArt for stacking, though I've come to realize that even this can't do the job properly because the correct sequence for stacking should be to first carry out the calibration on the un-de-Bayered files, then de-Bayer, then stack. I can only get it to work by de-Bayering the RAFs on import, and does at least appear to give workable results.

The only software that would seem to have the potential to do the job properly is Astro Pixel Processor, because this software doesn't use DCRaw to de-Bayer the files, but uses its own algorithm. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for the X-Trans algorithm to be incorporated.

Hope that helps.

Ian

[25585]

Bayer is on my X-T2 menu, but not sure which type. Its the default setting.

Have to check if more specific. On firmware 3.0 which is latest. 

[The Admiral]

3 minutes ago, 25585 said:

Bayer is on my X-T2 menu, but not sure which type. Its the default setting.

Have to check if more specific. On firmware 3.0 which is latest. 

Hmm, not sure what you mean by that. The X-T2 uses the X-Trans colour matrix, not Bayer, same as my X-T1.

Ian