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Webcams - what to look for

bigrbuk

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bigrbuk

bigrbuk

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I've seen plenty of comparisons of various cams and I've tried searching for an answer to this one, but I haven't found it yet.

What attributes are you to look for in a webcam for astrophotography? CCD sensor is the obvious one, but is that it?

I've found what I think is a CCD webcam (awaiting confirmation), for sale now, for around £5-7, but there must be more to it than that?

The cam has manual focusing, so hopefully removal of the lens should be easy and hence it should be a simple mod. Is it really just a case of removing the lens and replacing with an adaptor so you can slot it in the EP holder? I still don't quite understand how you achieve focus like this - is it down to moving the webcam in and out of the EP holder (missing a technical term here lol)

Help?!

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Eastridge

Eastridge

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I'd also be interested in the required attributes of a webcam for astro. I've seen threads where people suggest a Philips model but when I have googled that it seems to be discontinued. I have a vague recollection of the one for the x-box being talked about, but not an understanding of what it is they have that we need.

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JamesF

JamesF

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If you could find out what sensor is in the camera then it might be possible to look up the specs online to see if it's likely to be suitable, but unfortunately there's little preventing a webcam manufacturer from taking a perfectly good sensor chip and rendering it useless for astro imaging by restricting the level of control you have over it from the driver.

As a start you're probably looking for something with low noise, high sensitivity and a fairly fast frame rate (30fps is good, more is even better). Control of gain probably helps, as does control of exposure, gamma and white balance settings. Some cameras have those will be automated. High resolution probably isn't such a requirement as it often comes at the expense of sensitivity. With high frame rates you need to be able to maintain the sensitivity of the camera enough to get a reasonable image. I found that a problem with the two non-SPC cameras I tried out. In theory they support reasonably high frame rates. In practice they struggle to produce a usable image at those frame rates because they've just not sensitive enough.

James

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BuzzBomb

BuzzBomb

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There are several on Astro Buy Sell at the moment. Some quite fairly priced, some ridiculously so!

If you use the browse tab you can narrow the ads down to CCD equipment. Then there are only a couple of 3 pages to go thru.

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

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riklaunim

riklaunim

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VGA is a resolution codename for 640×480. IMHO it's pointless to fight for old, USB1 deprecated webcams for 50 GBP ;) There are newer like the USB2 Lifecams, but there is also ebay and cheap machine vision cameras that show up there (either used, or mass sales after a dead company or installation).

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JamesF

JamesF

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IMHO it's pointless to fight for old, USB1 deprecated webcams for 50 GBP ;) There are newer like the USB2 Lifecams, but there is also ebay and cheap machine vision cameras that show up there (either used, or mass sales after a dead company or installation).

I'm struggling to be convinced that this is the case for colour planetary imaging :)

For me the Lifecam Cinema is just not as good as the SPC900. It may be better in bigger scopes, but in my 127 Mak the SPC is clearly better. If any of the other Lifecams outperform the SPC then I've yet to see evidence of it. The mono firefly cameras are certainly cheap on ebay, but by the time you've added a filter wheel and a set of decent RGB filters you're way over £50. The colour Point Grey cameras I've seen on ebay are all significantly over £50 too.

James

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BuzzBomb

BuzzBomb

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I'm told the webcam in question is not CCD but VGA, which doesn't make sense to me, so the search continues. Don't see any on Astro Buy Sell either?

Thanks for the info James, that certainly helps

That's odd. A quick browse this morning, using the refining method I mention, brings up 3 and one 880 which can be flashed to. 900.

Can't really help you anymore than that...>_>

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

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bigrbuk

bigrbuk

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That's odd. A quick browse this morning, using the refining method I mention, brings up 3 and one 880 which can be flashed to. 900.

Can't really help you anymore than that...>_>

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

My mistake, I was looking at the Canadian site - doh!

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