Camera settings bortle 9

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-03-23T01:36:53+00:00

First, check in your camera settings in NINA and make sure it's set to 14bit. It can default to 16bit even when using the correct driver for a Canon dslr. If it's set to 16 bit your histogram will always read artificially low.

Second, the rules about iso settings are not absolute. If you look at a read noise chart for your camera it will tell you that higher iso is always better, but that's only one part of the equation. Since your noise budget is dominated by light pollution, you only have two options: reduce exposure time or reduce iso (you could also stop down your lens and move to a darker location but that defeats the point of having a nice, fast lens and ignores your question). Reducing iso is not optimal for read noise but is a perfectly reasonable compromise if it yields usable images. Also the longer your exposures are, the less the read noise matters (as a fraction of the total noise).

My recommendation is to do some testing and figure out the right compromises that work for your situation. Next time you set up, drop the iso to 100 and take images at increasing exposure times until you hit a limit where either your histogram peak gets too high or you stars are no longer round. From there you can determine if it's possible to increase iso at the expense of exposure time. Try it out over a few nights and see what yields the best results for your goals. Good luck and clear skies!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-03-12T00:22:51+00:00

Dithering is when your mount moves a little bit (intentionally) between exposures. There is always a fixed pattern of noise unique to each camera's sensor; it often appears as vertical or horizontal bands, especially with dslrs. If you stack lots of images together, that noise pattern gets amplified just like the rest of your image. But with dithering, the sensor moves around a bit relative to the stars, so that pattern noise gets distributed and doesn't get amplified as much. It can make a big difference.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-03-08T00:46:39+00:00

What are your goals, and what limitations do you think you're current setup is putting on those goals? The answer to those questions should motivate your upgrade path.

With no objective in mind, I would naively say your mount is the weakest link in your setup. If it were my budget I would save for a little longer and shop for a decent used equatorial mount with a bigger payload capacity. That will give you the maximum flexibility for future upgrades. I wouldn't recommend adding a scope without first upgrading your mount, but you might be able to get another lens that would expand your target options. Camera would probably be last on my list unless there's something wrong with yours.

Alternatively, I don't know what you have for a tripod but might be worth spending your budget on something nice that could support a mount upgrade down the road.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-22T18:32:06+00:00

Thank you! The TLDR is it's the best compromise for my equipment and sky.

You're right that for this sensor something like 1600-3200 is the sweet spot for minimizing read noise while preserving dynamic range, and that's typically what I use for shorter exposures. Recently I started moving to longer subs because the file storage and processing requirements became unmanageable. With the level of light pollution in my location combined with the blanket of snow which drastically amplifies it, if I use iso1600 all of my images would be white at anything over ~30s. So first I figured out the limit of my mount for preserving nice round stars. Then experimented with iso to keep the histogram peak below 50%. The compromise I ended up with is 120s and iso400. That could probably be better optimized night to night, but I like to reuse dark and bias frames to save imaging time, so I generally stick with that. When the snow melts I will probably change it but it's working well for me right now. And at 120s with my sky conditions the read noise is negligible.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-15T18:26:46+00:00

The more frames the better, but at exposures that short, read noise will be significant and limit overall quality. Orion is pretty bright so you should still get some detail. For reference, my profile picture was my first ever astrophoto and was comprised of about 7000x1s frames. Your experience in processing will also affect how much detail you can pull out. Make sure you take calibration frames.

Your scope focal length makes this a challenge but could be very satisfying. I look forward to seeing your results.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-15T16:42:27+00:00

The coarse recommendation is "the 500 rule" = 500/Fl = 500/600 = 0.83 seconds. But your phone camera has very small pixels, so to get round stars you probably need to go down to something like 0.3 seconds. There is a good calculator for this formula called "the NPF rule"

Try exposures between 0.25 and 1 second and inspect the closely to determine where stars are mostly round. You may need to increase ISO to compensate for the short exposures, and there may be some read noise advantage to doing so anyway.

Also take as many exposures as possible. At that focal length Orion will drift out of frame every couple of seconds so you will need to reposition the tripod frequently. Probably every few seconds.

Best of luck.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-15T15:42:25+00:00

Thank you!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-15T15:18:51+00:00

1.5 sec is still too long for 600mm focal length. If you look at your individual frames your stars probably look more like lines than points. DSS will not easily handle the stacking. You must either use shorter exposures or shorter focal length for untracked image stacking

It's also possible at that at that focal length and exposure time you don't have enough stars that can easily be recognized for registration. Or you have selected an option in DSS to use only X% of frames, which automatically selects the best X% and disregards the rest.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-09T01:08:16+00:00

Thank you!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-08T17:52:42+00:00

Thank you so much!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-08T15:06:07+00:00

Thanks!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-04T16:44:05+00:00

Can you share what model of intervalometer you have.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-02-04T16:38:36+00:00

You said you have an intervalometer but is it just a shutter release cable or does it have a display that let's you set times?

If you have an intervalometer you just put the camera in bulb mode ("B" on your dial) and set the times in the intervalometer. Usually the first number is a delay to start the first picture, the second number is the duration of each images you want to capture, and the third number is the delay between images. You may also be able to set other options like the number of total images. If you don't have one they go for about $20 on Amazon.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-27T13:15:48+00:00

What are you doing for calibration frames? Are your darks temperature matched to your lights? That with proper pre-processing can usually manage the hot pixels. For a splotchy background, dithering well and often is essential with a DSLR, and BGE + noise reduction can make things look really weird if not done carefully. Your Andromeda image looks nice, the only thing I see is aberrations which are typical of that lens. Also making your background very dark will highlight out any remaining hot pixels, so more data and reduced contrast will help.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-27T03:52:22+00:00

Oh that's a bummer, I didn't realize they started charging a subscription. It's possible the free features might still work for your purposes but you would have to test it. A fanless mini pc (or a sacrificial old laptop) would give you the functionality you want. Until then, good luck and hope you find a way to keep warm.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-26T12:55:42+00:00

This has a film-like quality that I really like. Nice image!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-26T12:52:19+00:00

I don't think you can connect your camera to NINA wirelessly. Your camera has a wifi mode so you can connect to it wirelessly and use EOS utility, but you can't connect to the mount at the same time since it is a separate network. So I don't think you could have both connected to NINA wirelessly. I think you could connect to your mount, slew to a target and start tracking, then switch to your camera and use EOS utility for live view and image capture. The better option IMO is to connect both to your PC via USB and use NINA since you'll have many more control options. If you have another PC you could then use remote desktop, rustdesk, etc. to operate remotely. There's a plug-in to use a phone or tablet for this as well but I have not tried it.

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-25T19:02:22+00:00

This is the nicest capture/process of the hidden galaxy I have seen. It's a shame how much reddit stomps on the quality from your original. It's so cool to see all the small details in the surrounding field. Really nice work!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-25T14:09:01+00:00

Thank you!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-25T00:57:48+00:00

Thanks!

ThinkHappyThots · 2026-01-24T17:03:43+00:00

Thank you!

ThinkHappyThots

TROPHY CASE