These pictures of Mars were taken with the following exposure settings - all pictures were generated by processing AVIs in Registax. All 1 minute AVIs were made up of exposures that were 1/25 second per frame. Pictures all taken on 22 June 2003 between 5:57 and 6:31 in the morning.

• A - 50 percent gain
• B - 60 percent gain
• C - 40 percent gain
• D - 60 percent gain and maximum saturation
• E - 30 percent gain and maximum saturation

My interpretation of these results are as follows:

• Image B with more gain reveals more detail than image A with less gain. Image B is more noisy as well.
• Somehow image C reveals the most detail, even though it has less gain applied than image A or B. It is possible that less gain adds less noise therefore more detail can be seen.
• Image D has too much gain and too much saturation applied during AVI capture.
• Image E (30 percent gain) has not enough applied. Compare this image with image C (40 percent gain) which has much more detail.

Lessons learnt

• Too much gain adds too much noise (Image A clearer than image B) (Image C better than image A and B)
• Too little gain does not capture enough details (Image E faint and featureless compared to image C)
• It is worthwhile to experiment.

Please note: these are the results for my telescope, camera, seeing conditions combination only. Your results may differ. The point here is that it is worthwhile to do some experiments of your own.