OIII filter advise for imaging please

[JML]

I currently have an ZWO ASI1600mm pro camera with the 5 position electronic filter wheel. I am using ZWO LRGB and Ha filters in the filter wheel. I want to add narrow band OIII to my images so I am looking for a reasonable OIII filter to add to my collection.

My two questions are:

What OIII filter should I get? The filter wheel accepts either 31mm unmounted filters or 1.25 inch mounted filters

What filter should I remove from the filter wheel when I get the OIII filter? Does Ha, OIII, RGB make since? Or, should I keep the L filter and remove either the R or G?

Thanks for any help in advance.

[yobbo89]

For my needs, i need a tight band oiii filter, due to the lp and target requirements i have a few and i personally found that badder soaked in a lot of lp over other ones which caused a lot of gradient problems , it was ok on the very bright targets that needed shorter exposures ,any how the oiii filter i have now is an astronomik 6nm, it's almost $700

The badder series are certainly a great starting point and the oiii dose it's job, the rest of my filter set is actually almost all badder,just putting the extra money in for a better oiii filter was worth it

[yobbo89]

What filter should I remove from the filter wheel when I get the OIII filter? Does Ha, OIII, RGB make since? Or, should I keep the L filter and remove either the R or G?

Thanks for any help in advance.

ha and oiii do well for allot of bi colour worthwhile targets , ha ,oiii rgb seems like a reasonable option, you can get away without a ''lum'' filter.

Ideally a 7 slot filter wheel would allow for more variety ha and oiii are great ,but an sii filter adds a bunch more to table!

[jimminCT]

I'm also using the ASI1600mm, but with the 8 position FW.
I can't say I'd give up any of the filters in mine. I'm shooting LRGB SII Ha OIII with an empty slot just because...

Maybe you should see if you can return the 5 position and get 7 or 8 slot wheel.

[ramdom]

I also have the 5 position mini EFW. I intended to do only NB so my filters are Ha, O3, and S2 and also a L filter and a blank spot. This blank spot occurred because my S2 is an unmounted filter and I had to use the tiny screws they gave to mount it. What I found is that by doing this, I couldn't screw in another filter next to it. So my advice is to be consistent - either do it all by screws or by threads in the filter but don't mix and match. It didn't work for me.


If I ever replace my S2 filter I will a get a screwed one but I got a great deal on it used so I went with it ($150 for an Astrodon S2).

--Ram

[XCalRocketMan]

You can do a lot with just RGB, Ha and Oiii. I use the Astrodon filter set ($$$$), and I use a 3nm Oiii vs the 5nm (blocks more LP and I can image with the moon out).

[JML]

That was the set of filters that I was thinking of, but I don’t know if i need to go for the Astrodon filters, the 8.5mm Baader filter for OIII seems to be more my price range.

[dcrowson]

I have a couple ST/F-8300M cameras with baader filters. I'm fairly happy with these filters but, as mentioned before, the narrower filters offered by Astrodon can definitely help when imaging with the moon and/or heavy light pollution. Ha (and largely SIII) seem to be ok if you're away from the moon but the Baader OIII will definitely get gradients. I pretty much stopped using OIII while the moon is in the sky.

Dan