I posted an image of M42 a few weeks ago and I took onboard that the processing was not that good. In my defence I did not have much data especially in the L channel.
I decided to capture more L data and this has been my focus over the last three weeks snatching opportunities where I can. There have been challenges with the weather. Transparency has been poor and M42 is quite low from my latitude only typically reaching a maximum elevation of 30 degrees before it vanishes behind my house. Please accept the image under these constraints as I'm never going to get Orion at 60 degrees elevation from my latitude.
I used a HDR composition on the L data. I used 30,60,90,120 & 180 second subs producing 5 L masters that was combined into an HDR frame L frame. I was not worried with the RGB data as that pretty much can look like "mud" provided you can present good L data to put the detail back in as most of the spatial data is carried in the L channel. The total integration time with rejections came out at about 10 hours with 100 1 minute subs in each of the RGB channels. The rest being L HDR composition data.
The composition worked out pretty well. I refrained from using anything other than local histogram equalisation as the HDRM was somewhat overcooking my data. The core, as always with M42, was a challenge as it took careful tweaking to keep the fine wispy features without burning out the core. I did not use masks and in hindsight that might have been better but as I have the data I can look at that if I so wish.
Please let me know what you think of the improved image. I do act on the forum comments and I take observations in good spirit. I do need to work on star processing however all in good time.
I wish you all fine clear skies.
