Astronomik CLS CCD Nebula Filter - Clip Filter for Canon EOS M Cameras

Astronomik CLS-CCD Nebula Filter for Astrophotography

This filter is suitable for photographing nebulae, star clusters and also galaxies even from close to the city. The contrast of the deep-sky objects is enhanced, because the light of the artificial illumination is blocked as far as possible. This allows you to expose 3x longer before the sky background is brightened. The CLS CCD filter thus improves results whether you are working near cities or under dark skies far from settlements.

The CLS CCD filter is ideally suited for photographic use on telescopes of all apertures with focal ratios from f/15 to f/2.

How the CLS-CCD filter works:

The filter completely blocks the emission lines of low and high pressure lamps (mercury (Hg) and sodium (Na)) and the lines of airglow. This improves contrast everywhere, even under dark alpine skies.

All important emission lines of astronomical objects are transmitted. The filter also blocks infrared light (IR light). An additional IR blocking filter is therefore not necessary.

The Astronomik Broadband Clip-Filter for mirrorless APS-C Cameras of the Canon EOS M System

The clip filter is optimized for use with normal camera lenses and for telescope use.

The filters sit securely and tension-free in the camera. Assembly and disassembly are easy with your finger, without tools! No changes to the camera are required to use the filters!

The challenge:

Do you own a Canon EOS M digital camera for astro-imaging? Then you have surely encountered the following problems:

Large filters for large camera lens objectives are very expensive.

If you place a filter holder between your camera body and lens, you loose the ability to focus to infinity.

For very fast (low f/ number) telescopes like the Vixen R200SS or the Takahashi “Epsilon” astrograph, a filter drawer or a filter wheel cannot be used since the distance to the corrector lenses would be changed.

With long exposure times, your camera’s sensor chip is exposed to more dust.

With the Astronomik Clip-Filter system you can take care of all of these problems at once!

The patented Astronomik Clip-Filters are made of black anodized aluminum and laser-cut on state-of-the-art machines. They can be inserted within seconds directly into the EOS camera body. There are no changes necessary and all lens functions (focus, screen, image stabilization) remain operational!

Almost all Canon EF system lenses (EF-M directly, EF-S and EF with adapter) and all M42 and T2 lens adapters, can be used with the Astronomik Clip-Filter system. The Clip-Filter system also acts as an outstanding dust shield, which prevents the possibility of dust settling on the sensor during long time exposure (The MC-Clear filter does not have a filter effect and only acts as a dust shield.)

Compatibility

The clip filters for EOS M can be used with the models M1, M10, M3, M5, M6, M6MkII, M50, M50MkII, M100 and M200.

A short guide for selecting the right filter

Lots of customers are overwhelmed by the vast number of filters offered by Astronomik. Due to that they give you a short guide how to select the right filter for your application below:

Astronomik´s normal recommendation for the "First Filter" is the CLS filter. The CLS blocks all unwanted artifical light pollution and natural airglow and gives you a dark background in your images. When using this filter you may expose much longer than without, so you will be able to pick much fainter structures and objects. The filter is designed in such a way that all objects are given in their natural colors - they would look the same if your human eye would be much more sensitive!

The CLS is the fist choice for any applications like night-scape photography and time lapse movies!

Important: The standard CLS has no built-in IR-blocker. In case your camera has been modified for astrophotography, please take the CLS-CCD which has a built-in IR-blocker!

If you have to work under a heavily light polluted sky, the UHC is a good choice too. Its transmission curve is very tight. It gives you the light from the Hß, [O III], Hα and [S II] lines in one single exposure. The reduction of light pollution is much stronger than the CLS/CLS-CCD, but the filter will work for gas nebulas only - any galaxies and open or globular clusters are filtered out! You will get "false colors" with the UHC, not natural colors like with the CLS/CLS-CCD.

The UHC-E has a more broadband light transmission. Here stars are less strongly suppressed, helpful for nebulae with star clusters.

If you want to die deeper into astrophotography, you should think about emission line filters centered on OIII, H-alpha and SII, available either with 12 nm or even 6 nm bandwidth. With these filters you can do ultra-deep images even under the worst sky you can imagine plus the full moon high up in the sky. The emission line filters isolate the light from a very tight range of wavelengths, don´t get any color information. If you want to create color images (false color like images from the HST), you will need all three filters to mix the three channels into a final color image.

When using DSLR cameras without IR cut filter in astronomy, we recommend the UV-IR block filters of the L-1, L-2 and L-3 series to correct chromatic aberrations when using refractive optics (camera lenses, refractors). Depending on the color correction of your scope you may use a wider spectral window for the luminance data. The L1 filter has the widest spectral window, the L2 is about the same as our current L-Filter and the L3 is much narrower.

If you use an optical system that is more or less free of chromatic aberration you should get an L1 filter for your setup. For general use the L2 filter is well suited to most optical systems with a corrector, flattener or reducer in the optical train while the L3 filter is designed for users of refractors with a less-than-perfect color correction.

As protection against dust in DSLR cameras without IR cut filter, the MC clear glass filter is suitable. It blocks neither visible light nor UV or IR, but is parfocal with the other clip filters for Canon EOS-M cameras.

Especially made for planetary imaging are the ProPlanet IR pass filters. The IR light transmitted by them is less sensitive to air turbulence ("seeing"), which makes the images sharper, with increasingly longer wavelengths being increasingly less affected.