Photosbykev

I had a play last night with a EQ3 Pro mount and Canon 5D3 and 200mm lens. I delibrately offset the PA by a few degrees and then shot a vertical and horizontal image which PPA solved using a local installation of AT in about 5 seconds/image. What threw me was the image that popped up showing the red X etc, because I was about 4 degrees off the magnification of the visual image was too large to see the X and the true NCP. I also struggled to visualise what the move instructions meant i.e. move 4 degrees right and 2 degrees down. Am I right to assume I had the mount 4 degrees left of the NCP and 2 degrees too high?? Also does the alignment of the camera relative to the axis of the mount significantly affect the results?

It looks like the functionality came in with CS3 extended The technique can be read about here http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-photographs-using-median-blending/ This is a quick comparison between a single Canon 5D3 3200iso x 40 second image on the left hand side and 11 similar images processed with the Median stacking in PS CC. The raw files were converted to Tiff via Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw with no adjustments applied at all. The image below is the centre 1000x667 pixels save as jpg with no adjustments.

I'm not sure cs2 has the functions needed. There are some good online tutorials for the technique I'll dig one out when I get on my laptopsent from my Sony Xperia Z2

To stack widefield images I used to use Dss or PI but recently I've been using PS with good results. Use the automate script to load the stack of images into one layered image, lock a reference image typically in the middle of the stack and then use the auto PS alignment. Convert the aligned stack to a smart object and then use the Median stack mode to blend all the layers together. The noise reduction in this method is surprisingly good without using darks sent from my Sony Xperia Z2

Just started a project thread in the DIY section to replace the control system

The one I had from FLO for review I've opened up to see what Skywatcher have done internally. The DC motor has a gearbox going into a 24T spur gear and then a 42T and 37T spur gears going into a 144 tooth worm/wheel, the rear of the DC motor has a 44 slot encoder disk. I need to get a tacho onto the encoder and 24T gear to check out the gearbox ratio. My personal thoughts are to throw away the control board, it's no good for timelapse work and develop my own speed/position control system, maybe Arduino based, to replace it so my timelapse photography is more controllable, but that will be another thread