first light dfk21au618

[cosmicdonkey]

Hi guys This was my first attempt with the dfk21au618 from the other night. I am quite pleased with it i guess. But know that with this camera and scope setup i should be capable of so much more. I have tried plenty of other captures since then but have been dissapointed with all of them. Compared with some of the other images i am seeing with this camera would i be right in saying that there is a steep learning curve with this camera?

I know after talking to people on this forum that you need to find out what works best for you and i agree with that totally. But the trouble i have is i dont know what the trouble is to begin with. I lack the experience of knowing whether something is out of focus (i spend a lot of time on this by the way) or whether it is just bad seeing. Also after using an spc900 and wxastrocapture for the last couple of years i am used to just using values between 0-100. I find ic capture a bit daunting.

So guys can you please give me any tips and criticisms on what you guys do or what you have learnt with your experience that may help me on my quest.

Also it would be nice if this thread could also help people new to ic capture as the only infomation i have really found about it is space cowboys pdf download

[scoobee]

nothing wrong with that image, well-done

[Freddie]

Can you give us some info on the settings you did use on the cam and may then be able to see if anything is particularly unusual in terms of setup.

[todd8137]

Just one tip and the only one you will need ,klik on histogram get jupiter on the screen now you want half black half yellow Or around 127 on the scale use gain ect to get there even if the image looks dark do not worry you can sort that at a layer date

but keep that histogram half and half

[Freddie]

I'm not so sure it's as simple as that. You need the right combination of exposure and gain to get the correct histo. You could use a low gain and long exposure or a higher gain and shorter exposure to get the exact same histo but you would not end up with the same image quality.

[cosmicdonkey]

i think it may be the case that a lot of my problems are bad seeing after typing " Jupiter bad seeing" into YouTube. I will play with the histogram as well. I noticed that my brightness and saturation slider don't seem to do anything but after selecting auto white balance it looks pretty good. when i used wxastrocapture i always set gamma to off. What do you guys set it too?

[Freddie]

For a USB cam, gamma 100 for a linear response. Did you have it set to zero in IC? Other settings?

[Grotemobile]

I think that is a great picture.Better than what i

have got up to now.The main problem is the

seeing conditons.It just fades in & out.I think

you have done very well.This is about the best

i have got.The camera is the QVC IMG 132E.

My scope is the C11.Yours is a lot better than

mine.

Steve.

Juipter Good Image.tif

[Freddie]

Seeing obviously can have an impact but if you don't have the camera set correctly, you won't get the best from it. Not knowing how the camera is set, though it's a good image, it's probably not appropriate to blame image quality on bad seeing just yet.

[todd8137]

I'm not so sure it's as simple as that. You need the right combination of exposure and gain to get the correct histo. You could use a low gain and long exposure or a higher gain and shorter exposure to get the exact same histo but you would not end up with the same image quality.

if you re read my post it does say ater the gain ect. I spoke with dmk they emailed hat to me Out the histrogram and any thing else can be sorted post process ?

[Freddie]

I think you have slightly missed my point there. To get a 50% histo you could alter the gain, but a gain of 0% or 100% could give the 50% histo so just giving a value for the histo alone is not a very good indication of correct camera setup. The IS team are not experienced astro photo guys (as Stefan at IS is quick to point out) so not so sure they are the best to advise on these things.

[cosmicdonkey]

my gamma was set to 100 on this shot. Thanks for helping me out guys. It means a lot. i also used 1/30 exposure which allowed me to shoot at 30fps. my lap top sometimes slows down when capturing an avi even at 30fps so i didn't think pushing anymore was worth it.

[Freddie]

Those settings look ok so a couple of other things you can look at. Check that your computer is not running any background software such as antivirus or general health check stuff whilst capturing the AVI. They will slow down the actual capture rate. Within reason, the shorter the exposure the better to capture good seeing, so if you can reduce exposure time and increase frame rate all the better. My experience is a histo anywhere between 40% and 70% will be fine and gain up to 80%+ of maximum to keep the exposure time low.

Although the 925 will hold collimation well, ensuring it is correct in the first place is important to get nice crisp images. Using MetaGuide to aid collimation will allow you to collimate will all your imaging kit in place and get the collimation fine tuned.

[cosmicdonkey]

thanks for the advise guys:) one more quick question do you remove the diagonal when imaging?

[Freddie]

Yes, no point in having anything there that is not needed as it will reduce quality and light even if only by a tiny amount however good the quality of the diagonal is.

[neil phillips]

Thought i would join in this conversation. Freddie is right, gain is only half the picture, it does indeed need to be considered ALONG with Exposure. Thinking in terms of gain alone. is not understanding how the camera operates or how to manipulate its settings to get the best out of different targets with different seeing conditions. And different

transparency.

Once this is all learned and considered, you will be setting the camera settings to optimal with all the different situations that planetary imaging will throw at all of us. In short Freddie is right again, that for most occassions keeping gain away from 100% is very much advised. though i have in the past got some nice images at full gain. generally its always better to drop it somewhat around what Feddie said. At a push 90% if histo is still too low,

if seeing is bad, and you are trying to use a faster exposure to say/130th secs to help beat the seeing. Rather than say 1/15 secs exposure and a much lower gain. Yes in that situation you will have lovely smooth frames, Because the gain will be lower. but the price you will pay, is the frames will be somewhat blurry, under poor seeing. Because the camera exposure is not operating fast enough to beat the seeing. In this case a higher gain but faster exposure will likely produce better results. One can break this rule to a degree. And Freddie did this recently on saturn. which surprised me, because at 24 degrees i didnt think the camera settings he used would have worked particulaly well, But on this occassion i think Freddie hit some rather nice calm seeing for saturn being so low. And by using a longer ( i call it slower same thing ) exposure he was able to get a nice histo with not too much noise, and without gain too high. it is indeed the relationship between seeing conditions, transparency. magnitiude of the planet being imaged. By understanding how to manipulate these conditions using gain and exposure,together. Once this relasionship is understood. you will be using the best settings for each session. no matter what is thrown at you

[cosmicdonkey]

thank you both for your comments guys i feel like i have really learnt something. I just can't wait to get back outside and put this into practice. If only these cameras had an anti cloud setting

[Freddie]

Didn't you know, it's under "file", "options", "clouds"............