New Member Question - Are my flats okay?

[StarGazer100]

Hi. I am trying to take some flats indoors with my Nikon DSLR, white t-shirt stretched tight over top of lens, pointed point blank range at an artists light panel which has 3 different light brightnesses and they all produce pretty much the same image.

My settings are the same as my lights (except for shutter time which for my flats I have at auto).

• ISO 1600
• AWB on
• Shooting mode = A
• Img format = RAW (sRGB)
• F 200mm @ f 5.6

Problem is, most flats I have seen online are a pinkish colour (not grey) and the histogram (I have been told) should be abouit 1/3 from the left (mine are about 1/2 way).

Deep Sky Stacker says that  "The overall tint of your flat frames is not really important because DeepSkyStacker is processing each channel separately and is applying the flat frames to each channel accordingly." I assume this is also the case for Sequator?

Can anyone advise please?

Many thanks in advance.

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by StarGazer100

[Clarkey]

I don't think the colour is too important. Providing it is even.

With regards to the histogram, you can always stop down the exposure to -2 or -3 which will reduce the exposure. To be honest I doubt the peak being nearer to the middle will have too bad an effect, but you can reduce it as above. If you use one of the standard software packages, most have a flats aid which will do the work for you.

[AstroExploring]

I assume your camera isn’t modified? You’ll find that a modified camera will show flats as a pink tint due to the over exposure in the red channel. This happened with my camera, I had grey flats until I got it modded. Filters will also give a different colour of flats. For example if I’ve been imaging using my L-eNhance then my flats will give a blueish colour. 
I always try and get my flats about a third of the way in from the left if possible but as I’m using the white t-shirt method I get slightly different results each time depend on how bright it is outside. If yours are in the middle that will be fine, the important thing is to not clip the data. 

[ollypenrice]

A histo peak at half way is fine.

Olly