StarTools

Greetings,
I use both Canon 6D and 7D Mark II unmodified bodies with a 1.5x doubler and F5 300mm telephoto lens. Our house on the edge of Yuma is under Bortle Class 6 skies. I tried a clip-in Opt-LPro for the 6D; what a disaster. The clip-in filter keeps the mirror locked up, which means I had to look for the stars, galaxies, etc. using Live mode. Not possible for me.

So I looked on-line for 77mm filters I could screw onto the front of my lens. There are quite a few generic 77mm light pollution filters, but none come with specs. I assume they're all broadband filters.

Have any of you had experience with these filters? Will they improve my results on galaxy photos?

Thanks for your advice,
Henry Detwiler

Hi Henry,
I own a 77mm IDAS LPS-P2 filter, which is a broadband LP filter, great for Luminance. Mounted in front of the Lens, the filters only work good above F3.5 or so which should be ok with Your doubler. If Your Lens is F2.8 I'd recommend to stop down a bit to avoid nasty banding. I wonder if any 77mm LPS filters are still in production....

Alternatively there are "Neodym" Filters available for several filter threads on Amazon, such as the HAIDA Clear Night. These are not as costly but less fine-tuned than interference filters (think of them as color filters filtering out yellows). It should give an improvement and pronouce red and blues (nebulosity) over stars, but I wonder if it really helps a bortle 6 sky...


Clear Skies,
Jochen

Thanks, Jochen.
I think for now I'll try longer exposures and the various StarTools options to dampen the light pollution.
Cheers,
Henry