Saturn May 3rd 5x Powermate v 3x Tal

[Space Cowboy]

Imaged with the 5x powermate last night after becoming frustrated with the colour balance I'm getting with the 3x Tal. Seeing was very unstable again so packed up at 12.30am after taking one avi with the Tal as a comparison. As you can see the powermate colours are more natural.

Powermate (75% scale)

Tal:

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Two very nice shots, I would say, especially for unstable seeing. Not that much in it. I tend to manipulate the capture settings in such a way that each channel uses as much of the ADC range as possible, without going into saturation (e.g. grey levels 5-245 filled). As this is a linear operation, I can set the colour balance the way I want it afterwards using e.g. curves in GIMP.

[Memory Bliss]

Very good images considering the poor seeing. I do prefer the powermate version though.

[cgarry]

Wow, that is quite a difference, that Tal really messes things up.

For the third night in a row I was out until 2AM attempting to image, the difference this time was there was some quite good seeing at times. I now have a lot of data but I will not know how good it is until I get a chance to start processing it on Monday. I am hopeful there is a good image somewhere in the data...

Cheers,

Chris

[JamesF]

I think the Powermate one has much better definition too. Much prefer that one.

James

[Cath]

Yes you can see the sharpness difference particularly with the Cassini division.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks for your comments guys! I must emphasize that the seeing was better for the powermate shot which would explain the sharper look though to me it looks a better shape. I've suspected the tal shots look too "pointy" with a triangular shape to the disk and rings though this may be due to the smaller tal image responding differently to the same wavelet setting.

Michael I did reduce red more on the tal shot which seems to have improved the capture colour, maybe need to reduce red even more.

Bravo Chris I could not last till 2am for 3 in a row.

[si@nite]

Nice shots Stuart, massive improvement in colour balance, i always use powermates, but find the tv 3x barlow performs just as good!

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Simon I think the tv 3x is what I need. I doubt the 2.5x powermate would be too small and also does not work with extensions.

[si@nite]

Thanks Simon I think the tv 3x is what I need. I doubt the 2.5x powermate would be too small and also does not work with extensions.

Hi Stuart i get aprox- the same image scale from my 3x as my 4x powermate carnt help thinking ive wasted nearly £300 quid lol.

[Space Cowboy]

Eek! You could get a good cam for that price lol Just seen the tv 3x is 100 quid Thought they were less than that....

Here is a IR Colour combo with the 5x powermate and QHY cams. This is actual capture size :

A bit too soft maybe? Think I need to stack less frames.