Herdsman and Crowbar
My off-the-shelf bridge camera isn't exactly the Hubble Space Telescope, but I surprised myself when I discovered what a little processing can accomplish. This is a detail from my accompanying image "Auriga Deep Field"--before and after processing. I took a crowbar to the Curves tool in Adobe Photoshop. The two Messier star clusters pop out, whereas only one of them was even faintly visible prior. Pushing Curves even further fills the frame with noise, so this seems to be the sweet spot for astrophotography.
Camera: Lumix DMC-FZ2500 by Panasonic.
19.9mm (54mm equivalent in 35mm format)
f4, ISO 1600, 8 seconds
Herdsman and Crowbar
My off-the-shelf bridge camera isn't exactly the Hubble Space Telescope, but I surprised myself when I discovered what a little processing can accomplish. This is a detail from my accompanying image "Auriga Deep Field"--before and after processing. I took a crowbar to the Curves tool in Adobe Photoshop. The two Messier star clusters pop out, whereas only one of them was even faintly visible prior. Pushing Curves even further fills the frame with noise, so this seems to be the sweet spot for astrophotography.
Camera: Lumix DMC-FZ2500 by Panasonic.
19.9mm (54mm equivalent in 35mm format)
f4, ISO 1600, 8 seconds