[RCC ] "soft" images , Wizard Nebula

Have not pulled the trigger on PI yet.
An AEF is one of my next purchaspurchases. 
thanks

Agree with all of the previous posts. An EAF outperforms a B Mask. I tested when I went from a B Mask to an EAF. A software like NINA, SGP, Sharpcap that will autofocus will be first on the list.

I image at 384mm an use a autoguider. A small 30mm SBony and a 120mini would do the trick with PHD2

What mount?

Nina is Free, PHD2 is free, Eqmod, ascom, all free. You have to pay for your hardware on your Rig. But image processing is as important to making your data look good as in focus, round stars are for integration. PI with the BXT, SXT, NXT with Photoshop can and will get you further along your journey to an image result that meets your expectations. 

Sorry in advance if I sounded "preachy". I hate giving advice on telling good people how and what to spend money on…

CS Tim

Agree with the other comments. BXT is going to be the best solution here if that is in your budget. And an EAF if you don't already have one. Otherwise, this really isn't bad. 

If you have Photoshop, you can look into the APF-R plugin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sG_aJo-Ww8)

I usually run my EAF to refocus every hour in normal conditions (I'm in the southeastern US, so temperatures don't usually drop quickly). If it's dry and the temperature is going to drop faster, I'll run it every 30 min.

Another thing to keep in mind is you're using a short focal length scope with a small aperture. This is going to ultimately limit your resolution, so there is a little bit of managing expectations as well.

Oskari Nikkinen:
There is another alternative to an EAF or a Bahtinov mask and that is to focus using HFR measurements from looped short focus exposures.

That is essentially what an EAF will also do, now you just do it manually.

HFR measurement focus is in my opinion much better than a B.mask focus, since nothing is open to interpretation unlike with the diffraction pattern of the mask. I focus manually like this with NINA and 3s exposures. Takes a bit of practice but you will get to the best focus point like this and can save some money on not getting the EAF.

I did look at it before but I wasn't sure how to use it. I might look into it again.

Keith Belzner:

Oskari Nikkinen:
There is another alternative to an EAF or a Bahtinov mask and that is to focus using HFR measurements from looped short focus exposures.

That is essentially what an EAF will also do, now you just do it manually.

HFR measurement focus is in my opinion much better than a B.mask focus, since nothing is open to interpretation unlike with the diffraction pattern of the mask. I focus manually like this with NINA and 3s exposures. Takes a bit of practice but you will get to the best focus point like this and can save some money on not getting the EAF.

I did look at it before but I wasn't sure how to use it. I might look into it again.

You only need to toggle on the star detection and analysis thing in the image capture screen. With that on NINA will measure the HFR of your stars, and your goal with focusing is to get the value as low as possible. When you reach the lowest value, you're in focus.

The thing that requires a bit of practice is just knowing what kind of HFR to expect with your kit. Use your kit enough and you have a pretty good idea, and know what kind of value to target so there is less guesswork involved. Seeing will effect this quite heavily, but the goal is always the same: The lowest value that night can give.

NINA will also draw a nice plot of your subs, so you can monitor your focus. If you see the HFR of your subs increase after some time its time to re-focus, you should expect to do this at least a couple of times in the first one or two hours of imaging just due to temperature changes.

Nooa Jutila:
Your pixel scale is horrendously undersampled at 6 arcseconds per pixel.
The reason for that is that you are using 3xbinning.
That makes your pixel size effectively 11.28 micrometers and divides your resolution by three.
I'm sure you've done it by accident. My advice would be to immediately turn it off.

I have gone through all of my settings and I don't see where the issue is. Running Nina, it's set on bin 1x1. I've never made any changes to the camera side, that I know of. 
do you know of a setting in siril that may be doing something on the processing end?

Edit:
I figured it out, I had reduced the image size when i downloaded it to my cellphone then to Astrobin. The original image is 2447x2447 @ 2.92 MP