Just realized I'd been cropping my nebula photos all wrong for years

I always cut out the edges thinking I was cleaning up noise, but after looking at someone's full-frame Orion shot from last month, I saw all this faint Ha detail I'd been trimming away. Anyone else accidentally tossed the good stuff at the edges?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_wendy1mo ago

Is it really that big of a deal though? I mean sure, you want to capture all the signal you can, but if the edges are blurry or have weird artifacts from your scope, cutting them off just cleans up the image. Idk, maybe it's just me but I'd rather have a clean, sharp crop than a full frame with mediocre corners. Plus, a lot of those edge nebulae details get lost in processing anyway unless you're really pushing the data.

oscarwright1mo ago

Yeah just crop it, you're overthinking it, I've tossed plenty of bad edges.