Some recent h-alpha captures

[King]

I feel like I'm making some progress in regards to the actual image processing but I still need to get to grips with the simple things like exposure and focus.

On the laptop I tend to get an uneven exposure so the edges appear darker whatever I do and I have to find a compromise somewhere. Surely there's an easy fix for that going by what other people are achieving here?

And is there some sort of trick to achieving perfect focus on the Coronado PST with a barlow equipped?

On the plus side the Registax related issues are going much better now - having learned how to avoid badly aligned frames and such.

(I do quite like how the last shot turned out though...)

[brianb]

I tend to get an uneven exposure so the edges appear darker whatever I do and I have to find a compromise somewhere. Surely there's an easy fix for that going by what other people are achieving here?

Try the "shadows & highlights" tool in Photoshop Elements - I find the default setting works very well.

And is there some sort of trick to achieving perfect focus on the Coronado PST with a barlow equipped?

Trick - no - try turning the gamma right down & the gain right up so you get the shortest possible exposure & the most contrasty image available to focus on. Then drop back to "sane" settings to actually take the movie. But focusing is never easy, and time spent doing it is never wasted.

[King]

Cheers, well following those bits of advice on some fairly recent footage (27th March) I wound up with this:

[Merlin66]

A Vegemite lid (!) or a clothes peg on the PST focusing knob will help to get that little more precision.

[Merlin66]

Should have asked: which camera are you using? what exposures for the surface and what for the proms???

[King]

I use a DMK41 for the Sun.

For the surface I try to get the exposure just low enough to not show anything overexposed, and for proms I expose it enough so they are clear but not white. (Can't give specifics right now because I'm still experimenting thus they're probably different every time.) If it's a clear day tomorrow I'll go for some new footage and post the settings used for that (along with the footage itself).