Still think stacking 3 filters on M42 was the wrong call for my photo.

I went with a light pollution filter instead of a narrowband one for the Orion Nebula last month here in Austin. Narrowband would have killed more of the city glow, but I wanted to keep the natural star colors. Ended up with a muddy background that took me 4 hours in GIMP to clean up. Would you guys sacrifice star color for a cleaner shot every time?

2 comments

2 Comments

reese12426d ago

Tbh you're describing the classic trade off in everything from photography to painting your living room. Picking the right tool for the job means you're always giving up something else. Like @abbyg60 said, it's brutal when you have to decide which part of the result matters most to you. I see this all the time with guys at the truck stop arguing over tire tread patterns - you either get better grip in rain or longer life on dry pavement, but you never get both perfect. Your Orion shot probably looks way more natural than a narrowband version would have, even if the background took extra cleanup. Sometimes the right call is the one that keeps the subject looking real even if the rest is a hassle.

abbyg6029d ago

oh man, I feel your pain on this one. I was out in the suburbs of Chicago last winter trying to get Andromeda and made almost the same mistake. Went with a broadband filter to keep the galaxy's spiral arms looking natural, but the city skyglow turned my whole stack into a brownish mess. Spent like 5 hours in Photoshop just trying to separate the noise from the dust lanes. Honestly? I think you made the right call for Orion though. That nebula's got so much natural color in the core, a narrowband filter would've killed all the red and blue highlights that make it pop. It's just brutal when you have to trade off between clean data and true color.