I finally got feedback on my star stacking that changed everything

A guy in the astrophotography Facebook group told me my stars looked oblong and said I needed to lower my gain below 200 on my ZWO camera. I'd been blasting it at 350 for months thinking more data was better. Has anyone else had a simple setting tweak totally transform their deep sky images?

3 comments

3 Comments

susana6615d ago

Yeah I read lower gain gives you much better star shapes. Makes a big difference.

bens8115d ago

Lower gain means the sensor isn't working as hard to amplify the signal, so you get less noise and the stars don't bloat as much. I shoot most of my deep sky stuff at gain 0 or 100 on my ASI camera, and the difference in star size is pretty clear. High gain can make faint nebula pop faster, but you pay for it with those fat, messy stars. If you're going for a clean, natural look, low gain is the way to go.

ray18912d ago

@susana66 people make it sound like a disaster but I've had plenty of high gain shots look just fine.