Nikon D810A - Forums

Topic starter

Aug 12, 2016

Hi folks,

Who is using the Nikon D810A? I´m interested in the RAW conversion workflow and your experience with Adobe CameraRaw and DeepSkyStacker.

Best regards from Austria,
Ernst

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Bill Mark

Aug 13, 2016

I use Adobe CameraRaw for lens shots (Adobe CameraRaw to correct lens, balance color and minor stretching) before stacking with DSS.
Telescope (ie no lens profile) straight stacking with flats. in DSS.
all stacked results (AutoSaves) processed in PS.
DSS crashes occasionally with the large D810A shots, need to load pictures and stack. Then close and open to stack another.

Ernst Gamauf

Topic starter

Aug 13, 2016 · Edited: Aug 13, 2016

Bill Mark:
I use Adobe CameraRaw for lens shots (Adobe CameraRaw to correct lens, balance color and minor stretching) before stacking with DSS.Telescope (ie no lens profile) straight stacking with flats. in DSS.
all stacked results (AutoSaves) processed in PS.
DSS crashes occasionally with the large D810A shots, need to load pictures and stack. Then close and open to stack another.

Thanks Bill for the information. I do it currently the same way and had a similar experience with DSS. Also the readout noise from the sensor is not linear. Did you experience any problems with Bias frames. What settings in DSS for raw conversion work for you?

Bill Mark

Aug 13, 2016

in general I cut corners, no bias, no darks, and for wide angle lenses no flats either.

the only DSS setting I use from the default is Sigma-Kappa to remove hot spots, plane and satellites.

Wei-Hao Wang

Aug 16, 2016

For D810A, remember to use the latest version of DSS, and get the 4GB patch.
With the 4GB patch, DSS can handle larger amounts of large images.

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Ernst Gamauf

Topic starter

Aug 16, 2016

Wei-Hao Wang:
For D810A, remember to use the latest version of DSS, and get the 4GB patch.With the 4GB patch, DSS can handle larger amounts of large images.

Thanks Wei-Hao!

What are the best settings in DSS for the D810A. Do you also use Camera Raw with lenses and DSS only with telescopes?

Wei-Hao Wang

Aug 17, 2016

Which part of DSS setting you are talking about?

For nightscapes, I used Camera raw and PS. For everything else astro, I use PixInsight to stack/calibrate the images and then come back to PS for further processing. That being said, I switched to PixInsight for only 1.5 year. Before that, I used DSS for many years, on 5D2 and D800. The D800 part should be very similar to D810A. So if you can tell me more specifically about the setting you would like to know, I may be able to provide something useful.

Cheers,
Wei-Hao

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Ernst Gamauf

Topic starter

Aug 17, 2016

Thanks again,

Raw conversion settings in DSS for for D810A, Black point to 0 (y/n), WB and color adjustment. And especially the lens corrections. Do you work only with flats with camera lenses and correct the distortion also in PI or DSS? The included raw converters in PI or DSS do not support lens corrections as far as i know.

Best regards,
Ernst

Wei-Hao Wang

Aug 17, 2016

Hi,

For the black point and WB, I always just use the default. I never apply color adjustment in DSS. That's what should be done in Photoshop. I use the AHD interpolation for raw conversion in most cases. (Don't use bilinear and Bayer drizzle unless you really understand them and understand what you are doing.)

For deep-sky photos, I almost always take flats if the lens/scope has focal lengths longer than 50mm. This is true for both PI and DSS. For images stacked by PI or DSS, lens correction in Photoshop can only work partially. I think distortion correction can still work, and perhaps color fringe correction to some degree. Vignetting correction should not work too well, but you can always try.

Hope this helps.

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Ernst Gamauf

Topic starter

Aug 17, 2016 · Edited: Aug 17, 2016

My draft summary of the RAW conversion

1. DeepSkyStacker Method
- Color Adjustment: default values
- White Balance (Use Camera White Balance)
- Bayer Matrix Tranformation: Adaptive Homogeneity-Directed interpolation
- Set the black point to 0: unchecked

2. Adobe Camera Raw Method
- Enable Lens Profile Correction (for all lights, darks, flats and bias frames)

Additional if no flats, bias and darks are available
- White balance adjustments
- Remove chromatic aberration
- Exposure adjustment that no clipping occurs
- Pre-sharpening and noise reduction

Background Information
Nikon raw data needs to be processed differently than Canon raw files. Nikon's raw files have no (or very little) bias (offset). Canon's do, so that one can do proper statistics at the low end.

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