Question on hot pixels

[Jonny_H]

Hi all,

I hope everyone is doing well.

A quick question for you all and apologies in advance if it is a daft question!

I had my second AP session last night where I took 10 x 180 seconds of lights on NGC2023 along with darks, flats and bias calibration frames.  This using my ZWO533MC Pro.  I noticed that within my stacked image (APP) which then lead me to look at the light frames that I have a number of red, green and blue pixels.  I know that these can be removed with good calibration frames (which i am still practicing to do 🙂), dithering etc... however I wanted to know if it is 'normal' for these types of cameras.

I am very new to using dedicated DSO cameras and have only used DSLR's in the past for photography and appreciate that they are different beasts.  Just wanted to know if there is some sort of tolerance on this or whether it is normal.

I have attached a PNG file for reference. 

Thanks in advance.

Jonny

[Grant Fribbens]

Great looking image. Yes this is quite normal for these types of cameras. With Astro Pixel Processor and a full set of calibration frames these then are minimised in the final stacked images. It is then down to post processing in software such as Photoshop. Obviously PixInsight can also do this and is incredibly powerful and this makes it more complex and something I want to try soon. I also use Topaz DeNoise as my final part of the workflow which does a great job.

[Jonny_H]

6 minutes ago, Grant Fribbens said:

Great looking image. Yes this is quite normal for these types of cameras. With Astro Pixel Processor and a full set of calibration frames these then are minimised in the final stacked images. It is then down to post processing in software such as Photoshop. Obviously PixInsight can also do this and is incredibly powerful and this makes it more complex and something I want to try soon. I also use Topaz DeNoise as my final part of the workflow which does a great job.

Thanks Grant.

I wasn't sure so thought I would ask the question. I didn't know if it was my camera playing up ☺️

Re: PI - im tempted to get this over APP although not sure yet. Im using a trial version of APP so when that runs out I will decide.

 

[Grant Fribbens]

I started with DSS and when I tried the trial of APP I was hooked. Here is my latest where I have tried using the HOO palette.

[Jonny_H]

41 minutes ago, Grant Fribbens said:

I started with DSS and when I tried the trial of APP I was hooked. Here is my latest where I have tried using the HOO palette.

That looks great.

I haven't used PI so cannot comment as such - but from what I understand APP is more user friendly for beginners and also the results from the default settings seem to be better than the equivalent in PI.

[dannybgoode]

On 07/03/2021 at 09:55, Jonny_H said:

Re: PI - im tempted to get this over APP although not sure yet. Im using a trial version of APP so when that runs out I will decide.

Honestly, having used PI a fair bit now it is really starting to gel with me and I'd highly recommend trying it.  Key is a) not to be put off by how hard people say it is.  It is not that it isn't difficult but it is just like any new software that you haven't used before, it takes time to get familiar with and that leads be to b) do not try to mentally compare processes and steps with other imaging software like PS or GIMP or whatever you are used to.  It isn't any of those, it's PI.  This might sound obvious however I think a lot of people try to associate a step they might take in PS to one in PI to aid familiarity when it is better to just go with it.

Inside PixInsight is pretty much a must and I know there is a new book out as well which is highly regarded (title eludes me).  Lots of good YouTube videos as well and once you have the hang of it you can do things that you simply can't do with the same elegance in any other packge.