Re: [APML] One more time! First image-M81-VC200L

[Jerry Lodriguss <jerryapml@astropix.com>]

>Between Santa Ana winds and a nasty learning curve it's taken me months to 
>get my first images - but I'm finally making some progress! Took this on 
>Saturday night 1/17/04 from a spot North-East of Joshua Tree National Park 
>in California. Vixen VC200L (8" -  f9 Cassegrain), Losmandy G11, guided 
>with ST-4, hypered Tech Pan exposed for 90 minutes. Developed in D19 for 
>10 minutes. Scanned with Polaroid SprintScan 35+. This is the raw image.
>
>I think my polar alignment looks good - no field rotation that I can see 
>(a first for me) - and it seems to be in decent focus but I'm not sure. 
>I'd appreciate ANY feedback. Based on the experience of others was a fair 
>amount of detail captured or is there more to be had? Any suggestions for 
>processing?
>Image is at:
>
><http://www.members.cox.net/whetzel/M81web.jpg>http://www.members.cox.net/w 
>hetzel/M81web.jpg


Hi Allan,

The link works.

The image looks pretty good.  I think you can improve the contrast a bit by 
increasing it by resetting the black and white points. You have some 
dynamic range that you are not using.

Try dragging the black point in Levels from 0 to about 15 and the white 
point from  255 to about 240.

Then try dragging the midpoint slider from 1.0 to 1.25 to brighten the 
mid-tones.

Jerry


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