Question about using a cheap filter for the Orion Nebula

I tried to save money and bought a $30 light pollution filter for my camera. I thought it would help with the Orion Nebula from my backyard in the suburbs. The photos came out with a weird green tint and less detail than my shots without it. I learned that a really cheap filter can sometimes make things worse by cutting out the wrong light. Has anyone found a decent budget filter that actually works?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jessica12d agoMost Upvoted

Found the opposite with my own cheap filter, a no-name one from an online auction. It actually helped a bit with my washed-out suburban sky, cutting the worst of the orange glow from the streetlights. The green tint you got sounds rough, but I just fixed that later by tweaking the white balance in my editing software. Sometimes the problem isn't the filter itself, but how you process the data it gives you.

the_laura12d ago

You've got a point about processing. I used to toss any shot with a color cast from my old filter. Maybe I should have tried fixing it in post instead of blaming the gear.

ryan_hart3812d ago

Yeah, that "how you process the data" bit from @the_jessica is key. My buddy had a cheap filter that gave everything a purple haze, and he almost threw it out. He just learned to set a custom white balance in-camera before shooting, and now it works fine for him. It's a good reminder that a weird color cast isn't always a dead end.