Although I am still imaging in inner space, at least the latest venture has an astro-imaging application. I have just purchased Noel Carboni’s Fractal Sharpening tool which works with Genuine Fractals (also purchased at the same time) and Adobe Photoshop. These 3 pieces of software working together provide you with a new powerful addition to your digital processing armoury. I have just applied the fractal sharpening to an old macro image taken of a bee in my garden, and the result is excellent. You can then use Genuine Fractals on its own if you want to convert a (physically) small image into a large poster print. Having just converted a sub-A4 image into an A3 image and printed it out I must admit Genuine Fractals really does a good job. You could also apply Noel’s fractal sharpening to your deep-sky images to give them that extra little “zing” – I know Noel did this on our mega Veil nebula project to very good effect.
So as we approach the end of June and my astro-imaging fast it has not all been a complete waste of time. I now have some very useful digital processing software, and a 77mm Hutech IDAS filter arrived this afternoon for those Milky Way shots using a DSLR and the AstroTrac. So hopefully, during the next summer month, I’ll be able to do some ultra wide-field deep-sky imaging with the Canon 17-55mm lens and the IDAS filter 🙂
Hi Noel,
Just wondering about your choice of 77mm IDAS filter with a wide angle DSLR setup. I think you’ll find it disappointing due to the gradient across the frame. This is due to the angle of incidence at the edges giving a greater thickness of the filter towards the outside. I found my 67mm IDAs filter was just usable with my P67 kit and 165mm lens and even then it had a gradient. I’d be interested to hear how you get on with it.
Best Regards,
Graham.
Hi Graham,
Greg here – the one that does the imaging, Noel does the image processing. I had problems with narrowband filters and the Hyperstar due to the reasons you give – but that’s because the Hyperstar is f#2 which means a considerable cone angle to the rays passing through the filter. I had no trouble using the same filters on a Sky 90 at f#4.5 so I am not expecting any problems on my Canon 40D at f#4 or above. I’ll let you know if I run into problems.
Best,
Greg