Gain settings

Every sensor is going to be different. It’s a balance between subject requirements, noise, gain and dynamic range. Don’t worry about unity gain. All that means is that you are using a gain setting where 1 detected photon = 1 ADU of signal. That’s not usually where you’ll find the best balance as described above.

Regardless of the camera, I recommend using the gain at which your camera switches to the HGC mode, which is when read noise suddenly drops. Going higher rarely brings any significant improvements in the read noise while decreasing the dynamic range, making it pointless in my opinion. Going any lower (or switching to LGC manually if your camera can do that) isn’t worth it either, in my opinion, since when you’re imaging targets bright enough they clip at HGC you can simply take 10-15mins of short subs and combine them after stacking.

For offset, I’ve set mine to 20 and never really noticed any clipping on the low end, but you can go higher if you want, it doesn’t matter all that much.

That’s your sweet spot…