Binning with a Canon DSLR?

[samir_ansari]

Hi all, I am interested in trying this as I have quite a slow scope and an unmodded camera. Is there any software that will let me capture and bin raw exposures from my 450D?

Thanks!

Samir

[Merlin66]

Hmm

I think you may be out of luck.

The DSLR formats are not like a CCD camera.

The nearest I can see is a software option in AstroArt which does a 2 x 2 binning on a RAW file.

To be honest I've never seriously tried it, but it seems to display a smaller (ie binned) image......

HTH

[themos]

Ehmm, doesn't DSS's "super-pixel" mode give you that, effectively?

[Ags]

Use a .5 focal reducer - you'll get half the resolution and 4 times the light on each pixel... Just like binning, but you might get the bonus of a wider field of view.

[SteveL]

@ Themos - DSS superpixel mode doesnt provide binning. What it does is creates one RGB pixel using the four RGGB pixels in a 2x2 area... i.e. its created a single pixels out of real data from RGGB pixels, unlike normal mode which "interpolates" or "makes up" data for the colours missing from the individual coloured pixels (red pixels can ony record red data, wo where does the blue and green data for that pixel come from... oh yes, its made up from the analysing the surrounding pixels of that colour). It means the outout image is half width and half height, but all the colour data is made up from real data, and not "analysed" from neighbouring pixels.

@ AGS - Unsure if a 0.5 reducer on a C100 and a 450D would be anywhere near fully illuminating the chip, and would cause some coma issues around the edge of the covered area.

I know that Images Plus provides software binning, as does Nebulosity.

[samir_ansari]

Thanks very much for all your help with this guys! In the end I didn't really want to shell out on extra equiptment like a focal reducer and just wanted to work with what I had.

I have been getting reasonable success using the low noise 2x2 binning feature in AstroArt.