Post processing newbie, again

[GrantEb]

Hi All

This has probably been asked a million times here, but I am new so please bear with me.

If I take 50 x 30sec images of say the Ring Nebula.

If the single frame images look under-exposed, will stacking etc enhance it to a decent image, or will it just be a better quality under exposed image?

I saw the post "what can people do with this?", Steve, that is amazing.

I have images similar to that, but thought they were useless and overexposed etc.

I will def be reading all the posts in this sub-forum, amazing stuff.

Cheers

Grant

[namreg]

Hi Grant

I'm a newbie at this stuff myself, but I've done a bit of homework so, as no-one else has responded to this, I'll give it a go. If what I say is wrong, I'm sure someone on here will put me right.

Taking multiple images and stacking them, as I understand it, will basically decrease the noise in the image and therefore give you a cleaner image. The noise is random, so the idea is that with stacking multiple images, the noise in each of the images will cancel each other out. And it works. It won't increase the signal (i.e. the stuff you want in the image) but what you end up with will be easier to process because of the lack of noise.

As regards what you believe to be underexposed single frames, you'll find that there is a lot of data in them, but you can't see it. The secret to this stuff is in the processing, which brings out the detail. There are shed loads of tutorials on the web that explain how this is done. Spend a bit of time researching and you'll be surprised at what you can do with the images you've got.

Hope that helps. And I hope it's correct!

Doug

[adamsp123]

Simplified version - Lots of subs stacked reduces the noise, longer exposures shows fainter detail.