OK - so how on earth do you properly focus a webcam without a nearby star?

[omaroo]

Hi all

Just thought I'd take the new ZenithStar 66ED out tonight for a quick spin, and thought as I was setting up, "time to use that ToUcam that's been sitting there since I bought it". So... this was going to be my first real go at webcam imaging. I rigged it all up and.... well... think that it's really difficult to achieve good focus. Most ToUcam lunar images I've come across on the web are grainy and generally poorly focussed and overcooked (sharpened) too. Is this normal?

How on earth do you guys do it? I haven't fiddled with these particular images in PhotoShop, but I have tried on others. Applying various sharpening algorithms simply overcooked the images and contrast looked horribly overdone. Is there a simple method? What's the secret of focussing with a webcam? Focussing "on-screen" in real time is very difficult - I could not get any sharper that these are already - 10:1 focus control and all. Maybe a Hartmann mask? The moon was so bright tonight that I didn't have a nearby star that was uncovered by cloud.

Any advice? I love the WO 66ED I might add. Not a bad little scope for the money!

Cheers and thanks everyone

Chris

My poor first attempts:

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Have you got the IR blocking filter Chris? This makes focusing only a normal pain in the rear as opposed to a right royal one. Other than that its a guess and hope thing. I think we all use registax for processing and tweaking the AVI into a single image, that helps a lot.

What you have captured is great BTW. Not a great deal wrong with it.

Captain Chaos

[omaroo]

Thanks Captain

Yes, I pulled the original IR filter out of the ToUcam's lens and mounted in my Mogg adapter. (photo below)

I think I'll try K3CCD tools and use its focus routine. Sounds pretty involved though.

Cheers and thanks again!

Chris

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

The focus thing in K3CCD is quite easy to use. Watch out if you have high clouds as they will drive you mad when they make the focus appear to go off then come back again. I think it will only work on a star though.

Captain Chaos

[omaroo]

OK - how's this one? I think that I probably fluked a little better focus with this one, and shouldn't expect much better out the 640x480 VGA format - or should I?

Cheers

Chris

[MikeD]

Focus looks pretty good, It could be just down to the seeing.

What I do is when I have got the best focus that I can using the live image is to do the final tweeking while recording an AVI as you get a much faster refresh rate on screen while recording.

[geppetto]

Looks like you got focus sorted on the second one Chris 8)

Nice one mate....

Practice, practice is the order of the day

[themos]

Focus looks pretty good, It could be just down to the seeing.

What I do is when I have got the best focus that I can using the live image is to do the final tweeking while recording an AVI as you get a much faster refresh rate on screen while recording.

Do you? With K3CCDtools? Maybe you missed some option somewhere? If anything, the software is more likely to drop some frames from the display while recording so that it doesn't mess up the capture.