jtw astronomy

[bottletopburly]

I came across this company via youtube they have some good astro mods so thought i would share the link to their site just incase anyone`s intrested

http://www.jtwastronomy.com/shop.php

[skywatcher58gb]

Interesting link

Dvae

[Gina]

Yes, very interesting

[Steve Ward]

250 Euro for a modded SPC900 . . . . . http://www.jtwastronomy.com/products/modified_webcams.php

Steve.

[Daniel-K]

there a bit pricey but there products are well made i like them

[bottletopburly]

yeah pricey but do seem to be done to a high standard then again, to some peeps in this hobby would pay

[swag72]

I know of someone who has just bought one of those DSLR's in a box. The sensor was utterly filthy, there was what looked like a couple of hairs on there and all sorts of bits. Definitely on the sensor as well as absolutely no light was getting through to those areas. Suggests that their workspace for such workmanship is far from sterile. That's only part of the story, the other half is of course how they rectify the problem - That's ongoing at the moment.

I certainly was not impressed with what I saw on the images of that sensor.

[bottletopburly]

I know of someone who has just bought one of those DSLR's in a box. The sensor was utterly filthy, there was what looked like a couple of hairs on there and all sorts of bits. Definitely on the sensor as well as absolutely no light was getting through to those areas. Suggests that their workspace for such workmanship is far from sterile. That's only part of the story, the other half is of course how they rectify the problem - That's ongoing at the moment.

I certainly was not impressed with what I saw on the images of that sensor.

oh dear hope your friend gets it sorted

[ollypenrice]

I know of someone who has just bought one of those DSLR's in a box. The sensor was utterly filthy, there was what looked like a couple of hairs on there and all sorts of bits. Definitely on the sensor as well as absolutely no light was getting through to those areas. Suggests that their workspace for such workmanship is far from sterile. That's only part of the story, the other half is of course how they rectify the problem - That's ongoing at the moment.

I certainly was not impressed with what I saw on the images of that sensor.

Interesting and a little disturbing!

Olly

[Gina]

Hmmm... cleanliness is absolutely essential for this sort of work! Frankly I'm appalled - if I can do DSLR mods without mess on the sensor I don't see why they can't. At those prices too! Anyway, my experiments show that taking the sensor temperature down to -25C is ridiculous. And why they reckpn they need a 150W Peltier TEC I really don't know. My experiments showed lower power Peltiers were more effective. I've also found that water cooling is not necessary - I reach 28C below ambient with air cooling only. In practical use I have found little difference with temperatures below -5C with my 1100D but the ultimate noise versus cooling results are currently being calculated. Some 2000 odd dark frames at temperatures ranging from 18C down to -10C with 4 subs at every ISO setting should yield some reasonably satisfactory statistics and show how cooling a DSLR really affects the noise.

[vdb]

I can imagine one is disappointed if you discover this ... hope it get's fixed ...

Now you need to remember this is a young Guy starting up a company and in all his enthusiasm he probably has not worked out all the test procedure he should do.

On the peltier thing, maybe a typo or, and for me that is more important, the oversized peltier and body help it to get trough the night in deep cooling, isn't v2 supposed to do a delta of 60 degrees ...

I know of very few ccd chips out there that can get to this delta, and only recently sbig reached that milestone (FLI and Apogee have already products going deeper)

In the end it's the after sales support that counts ... let's see how he handle this,

/Yves

[SnakeyJ]

I've just stumbled on the JTW site today, while researching/browsing ICX414ALA/AQA CCD mods - but the V2 Ultimate DSLR Cannon EOS mods ( http://www.jtwastronomy.com/products/JTWultimate.php) looked most impressive solutions (based on my limited knowledge) and the prices (based on new camera bodies) not too daft if the quality control and customer service issues are resolved. They are also offering to mod customer supplied Cannon EOS bodies. According to their news announcements, they are moving to new workshops in the new year, so may be one to keep an eye on in the short term.

Would be interested to hear of any more experiences, or perhaps a pinch of reality from the more hard headed and seasoned AP practitioners.

[Rottweiler]

Hi, A bit late but this thread only just came to my attention. I am the proprietor of JTW astronomy. I would like to put our side to this story.

1) The dusty sensor, this was traced back to some desiccant we used. Guaranteed to be 'dust free'. Flash spun fibre of some type, Very frustrating, it was not only expensive, but after testing and checking for cleanliness some of the early model cameras were arriving with incredibly dirty sensors, the bag was shedding dust in transit. This is since rectified with a different brand of desiccant.

2) The webcams, at this time we were paying over just 100 euros each for the webcams. At that time it was not an unreasonable price. 250eur - 21% VAT = 197.50. - 100 for the camera, - 20eur for the dustcap and 1.25" adapter, -20eur for the USB-serial adapter, -10eur for bare components = 47.50 eur. The process takes about 2 hours = 23.75eur, minus 40% income tax. Which left us with 14.25eur per hour, which I do not think is excessive for skilled work. We paid a guy 75eur last week to unblock our workshop sink, it took him 30 minutes.

3) Water cooling, interesting argument from Gina. As we since found it also to be unnecessary, but we have been selling the excess systems to be fitted to high end CCD cameras as closed circuit coolers to keep hot air away from the optical system and to avoid wasting water.

4) We also agree that there is diminishing returns with cooling, a lot of noise is removed with just a little cooling. But, we standby the decision to cool to -25 as the noise is practically eliminated, and we are yet to see another system that is capable of 1 hour long exposures with such results as our cameras.

As a general comment, indeed we did have a troublesome start to production of these cameras, we have since ironed out problems, gotten the build time down to just a few days. We are now back on top of orders. Anyone with our earlier models has had (or is in the process of getting) a free upgrade to the latest system. We did bite off more than we could chew and can only apologise to people we inconvenienced, but it sure does feel good to see emails from happy people in our inbox. Setting up a workshop proved to be a bigger task than imagined.

Sorry if this is classed as advertising, but there are two sides to every coin!

[Gina]

Thank you for putting your point of view I would agree that you bit off rather a lot - this is not an easy job as I've found out myself. Glad to see you've got things sorted out now - I think to get this going as a working concern has been a good effort - well done Very enterprising and I highly respect enterprise.

[admin]

Sorry if this is classed as advertising, but there are two sides to every coin!

We understand you wanting to respond to criticism and you are welcome here at SGL but please don't use the forum for advertsing, publicity and promotion (we have removed the marketing part of your post).

Thank you