Color Infinity - M51 Playing Around: Playing around trying to get a good color balance with the color Infinity! It is considerably easier with the mono Infinity and filters!! I shot...

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Playing around trying to get a good color balance with the color Infinity! It is considerably easier with the mono Infinity and filters!!

I shot 33x60sec. subs of M51, and aligned and stacked them both in-camera and with PixInsight.

- First off I found the in-camera results to be softer than than those out of PixInsight, i.e.: less detail but also less noise, probably the result of the Infinity software's inherent noise reduction.

- Second, I couldn't get what I considered to be a reasonable color balance using either approach.

- Third, I split the resulting images to their LRGB channels and recombined them as I would mono subs.

I continue to play with the camera. The results are shown below:

Enjoy!

bwa

In-camera aligned and stacked
In-camera aligned and stacked...

Above result reprocessed as LRGB in PixInsight

Subs aligned and stacked in PixInsight

Above result reprocessed as LRGB in PixInsight

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Your sky doesn't look very good, definitely image 2 has the better detail, as you said, probably a result of the noise reduction in image 1. But the color is so odd. I don't think it'll help, but have you tried swapping the color channels, i.e. Make red to blue and blue to red, etc? When I got my QHY, there are sittings in Nebulosity to set the channels correctly (I use for my stacking).

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Europa wrote:

Your sky doesn't look very good, definitely image 2 has the better detail, as you said, probably a result of the noise reduction in image 1. But the color is so odd. I don't think it'll help, but have you tried swapping the color channels, i.e. Make red to blue and blue to red, etc? When I got my QHY, there are sittings in Nebulosity to set the channels correctly (I use for my stacking).

The sky was and has been generally crappy for the past six months!

Yup, I played around swapping the channels. The last result is about as close as I got to something I consider realistic. The Infinity software has a Color Balance setting but its Auto setting is ridiculous; None is probably better. You can play with the RGB settings but I still haven't had much luck getting a color balance I like... Even the color cast removal utility in PixInsight yields a green result AND I've found this utility works well for everything I shoot with other cameras. But I keep trying.

bwa

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

bwana wrote:

Playing around trying to get a good color balance ... (show quote)

Very artistic series Brian.
Which is your favorite?
Craig

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

CraigFair wrote:

Very artistic series Brian.
Which is your favorite?
Craig

The last one is probably closest to the "right" color... But I lke the color of the 2nd image.

bwa

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

bwana wrote:

Playing around trying to get a good color balance ... (show quote)

Was the excess noise coming from the seeing conditions. Here is a shot of m51 I took a few nights ago with the mono Infinity and I didn't see the same noise problem. This was 8 60sec images for 480 sec total. Seeing conditions were excellent that night.

(Download)

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

JimH123 wrote:

Was the excess noise coming from the seeing conditions. Here is a shot of m51 I took a few nights ago with the mono Infinity and I didn't see the same noise problem. This was 8 60sec images for 480 sec total. Seeing conditions were excellent that night.

My seeing conditions were about the same as they have been for the past six months; generally crappy! Mainly high thin cloud.

However, I do find the color Infinity to be noisier than the mono, probably because of the Bayer filter reducing photon capture and me not increasing exposure to compensate.

I'm going to configure an imaging setup with a larger aperture for the color Infinity; f/6-7 is not optimal unless I push exposure back into the "require guiding" realm. I find f/6-8 works very nicely with the mono camera.

bwa

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Woo-Hoo!
Well, you and Jim123 keep perfecting it.
When I finally get one, you guys will have all the bugs worked out.

I predict around 2053...

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

SonnyE wrote:

Woo-Hoo!
Well, you and Jim123 keep perfecting it.
When I finally get one, you guys will have all the bugs worked out.

I predict around 2053...

Save your recyclables...that's all you are missing. Of course you can try to be good (for once) and maybe Santa will be good to you this year.😀

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

SonnyE wrote:

Woo-Hoo!
Well, you and Jim123 keep perfecting it.
When I finally get one, you guys will have all the bugs worked out.

I predict around 2053...

By 2053 the Infinity will be archaic and you can pick one up at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar...

bwa

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

bwana wrote:

By 2053 the Infinity will be archaic and you can pick one up at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar...

bwa

By 2053, Sonny willbe like me, 103 years old!

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

JimH123 wrote:

By 2053, Sonny willbe like me, 103 years old!

Keep gulping that Geritol!!

bwa

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

bwana wrote:

...
I'm going to configure an imaging setup with a larger aperture for the color Infinity; f/6-7 is not optimal unless I push exposure back into the "require guiding" realm. I find f/6-8 works very nicely with the mono camera.

Reconfigured and waiting for an imaging sky.

Celestron 8" EdgeHD back in the closet.

Color Infinity with 0.6x Reducer and HEUIB-II filter on the AT 8" RC scope, mounted on the CGEM DX, ready and waiting. The 1.38 arcsec/pixel is still oversampled for my average sky but we'll see how it works out?

Bring on the good weather!

bwa