Astronomik clip filters

I've dabbled with astrophotography off and on for more than 20 years, but am looking to get a bit more serious now. I've got Canon XTi and 50D bodies, and have been looking at picking up one of Astronomik's EOS clip-in filters for piggyback, prime and eyepiece projection shooting with my old 6" Meade 645. The scope itself was designed for wide field prime astrophotography, but I've never used it for such.

Which of the Astronomik clip-in filters would suit me best for general purpose use? My area suffers from light pollution, and I've been happy with my Lumicon UHC for nebula viewing, but am not sure that would be my best bet for general use with the camera. I thought I'd get the CLS, but that seems best-suited for CCD cameras, and the UHC-E is recommended for scopes smaller than 5". So which among their CLS, UHC, UHC-E, OIII or H-Beta would be my best investment at this point?

I highly recommend the Hutech line of LPS filters. They offer the clip type and the front lens type as well. They work as advertised and in my experience actually have a positive effect on color balance. After using my IDAS LPS2-P2 for the first time I was very pleased to see how much easier it was to color balance the stacked images. My type filter attaches to the field flattener, between the camera and the telescope.

When you get a chance check out their product lines and some of the tests and samples.
http://www.sciencecent​er.net/hutech/idas/lps​.htm

I've got the Astronomik CLS clip filter and I use it in my unmodified 1000D (XS). I did a with and without comparison https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=777472.

It's my only filter so I can't compare, but I did lots of reading. I considered the Astronomik UHC filter. It seemed to me that the CLS was about blocking the light pollution and letting the rest through, where the UHC was about only letting the emissions though. My lenses let in little enough light already, so I went for the CLS to block as little of that as possible.

The filter does change the colour of things, but I'm learning how to restore the colour balance in processing. It has let me capture my first nebulosity too, which I'm very pleased about! As for light pollution, I can do longer exposures before the histogram moves too far to the right and the resulting images have much less sky gradient.

I'm very pleased with it. The only downside is I can't use EF-S lenses. And it won't work with full frame cameras.

I have the Astronomic CLS one, but haven't tested it as yet. It came with a modded DSLR I bought used. For shooting in the suburbs I have bought the clip 13nm H-alpha, 13nm OIII, and 13nm SII with a view to doing narrowband images from light-polluted skies, and I'll shoot RGB from dark sites.

I also have the 2" IDAS LPS-P2 that Nighthound mentioned. I'd like to compare it side-by-side with the CLS when I get a chance.

Now I have my fields flat I'm right to really get stuck into it more often.

All of my pictures are with the EOS CLS clip filter from Astronomik, Can't fault it, fantastic for me. Without it i would be lost.

I can't really help here as I've only used the CLS, or nothing, but I can definitly say that the CLS filter allows me to get a lot better shots than without it. Everything in the last 2-3 months on my website is with the CLS.

Thanks for the input, folks. It looks like the CLS filter it is. How do you handle white balance, might I ask?

jblaschke wrote in post #9074513
Thanks for the input, folks. It looks like the CLS filter it is. How do you handle white balance, might I ask?

I don't...

I tend to balance RGB inside levels with CS3. I set the mid points to same point to balance them.

Same here. Play with the levels in the separate R, G, and B channels to do a custom white balance.

Geeze, I just now notice I posted this in the image forum, and not the talk. Sorry about that!