New camera QHY8L

[Baffa]

Today i recieved my first proper Ccd camera, was quite excited!

I heard bad, and good, things about this camera so I was a bit worried.

It turns out, so far, that everything's working as intended. Drivers installation, offset and gain adjustments, all worked flawless!

The capture software, Ezcap?(can't remember the name...) works but it could do with some improvements, mostly cosmetical though.

The hardware itself was to my surprise very good, it did take a peek inside to inspect the general solder quality, clearly above consumer grade! Overall the general build quality felt very good.

Right now I'm slowly building a darks library, seems to hold the temperature quite good, roughly +-0.5 degrees. Also, of course very impressed by the noise levels coming from a DSLR, hehe.

I'm very happy with this buy and I can't wait for some good weather to catch some photons!

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[oldpink]

good luck with the new camera hope you get some great use out of it
I'm stuck with DSLR for a bit, the Mrs is going nuts as I already want / need to upgrade my mount
and I want a CLS clip filter for the Canon as well as a 300+ zoom lens the list goes on and my pockets empty quickly

[sheldondave]

Hi,

I have been looking to get one of these in the next month or so, when I get my new scope and Mount, so will look forward to hearing how you get on, and some images.

Dave.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

QHY has come a long way. Quality has improved drastically over the last years.

I received the QHY5L-IIc today myself.

Came in high quality tin can, fully padded.

The build quality of this little camera is good.

It came with usb cable and ST-4 guide cable, a guide ring to clamp around the camera to prevent tilt in the focus tube and an extension tube.

Downloaded latest drivers, installed, connected camera and it worked straight out of the box with EZCap and PHD2.

It's nothing like the old QHY5 from years ago. I'm impressed. Good bang for buck as they say.

[Thalestris24]

I just got one too but not done anything with it yet! I've not even connected/powered it up.

Hope the fan isn't too noisy....

Louise

[Baffa]

It might take a while until first light, the weather have been awful and it doesn't look any better.

The fan have some whining sound. I don't think it's too loud but..

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[r3i]

QHY has come a long way. Quality has improved drastically over the last years.

.....

It's nothing like the old QHY5 from years ago. I'm impressed. Good bang for buck as they say.

Couldn't agree more - the QHY8L is a completely different beast from the old QHY8s that they sold a few years back.  I got mine at the back end of last year and like everyone else opportunities to use the camera have been a bit thin on the ground but so far I've been very happy with the camera.  I've used Nebulosity for image capture rather than the EZCap.

IMHO the QHY8L provides very good value - as you say, plenty of bangs per buck.

[Baffa]

Had my first light last night. Pleased to report it does work, had problems with flats and guiding but that was more user error, haha. ;-)

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[Thalestris24]

Had my first light last night. Pleased to report it does work, had problems with flats and guiding but that was more user error, haha. ;-)

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I had my first light on Sat night/Sunday morning. Had some problems not to do with the camera but got a few subs. One camera problem - one side is slightly out of focus . I'll have to try and put that right next time.

Louise

[Baffa]

Ok, had a couple of runs with the camera now. Still is impressed with it, even more perhaps when I start to learn how to process the data. 

It's not without prioblems though,

Right now there seems to be a bug with the ASCOM drivers, you'll get extreme amp glow or at least something that looks like amp glow. The workaround is using an older driver or use Ezcap, I use Ezcap, not the best program but it works.

One minor issue that could easily be overlooked is the fact you need bias frames >4 seconds, I didn't think of that double exposure and it sure messed up my stacked images ;-)

http://astrob.in/87144/0/

http://astrob.in/87230/0/

[Thalestris24]

Ok, had a couple of runs with the camera now. Still is impressed with it, even more perhaps when I start to learn how to process the data. 

It's not without prioblems though,

 

Right now there seems to be a bug with the ASCOM drivers, you'll get extreme amp glow or at least something that looks like amp glow. The workaround is using an older driver or use Ezcap, I use Ezcap, not the best program but it works.

One minor issue that could easily be overlooked is the fact you need bias frames >4 seconds, I didn't think of that double exposure and it sure messed up my stacked images ;-)

 

http://astrob.in/87144/0/

 

http://astrob.in/87230/0/

Yeah, it does look like it needs the older v3.0 Ascom driver. I've changed over to v3.0 for the moment. EZcap uses the native driver which doesn't have the problem. I use the ascom driver with APT as I'm used to APT and it integrates with Astrotortilla. The v3.0 driver doesn't show any amp glow in single 300s or 600s dark frames but... instead it has an overscan artefact - the reason v3.1 was created, I think. It should be easy enough to crop off the overscan in post-processing. I'm hoping the overscan won't interfere with calibration but it'll have to wait until some clear skies to try it properly!

Louise

[Baffa]

I forgot to tick the ignore overscan area in Ezcap. I will redo my darks library at some point but now I use it as is. It doesn't seem to interfere with with calibration. DSS seems to ignore it completely, could be a temporary solution to use that program until the ascom driver is fixed.

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[jaspalchadha]

Owned a qhy8l for a year... wasn't bad

[Thalestris24]

Hi

For some reason the ascom driver option for selecting effective area is greyed out? So capturing via APT results in an overscanned image :{. At least the v3.2 seems to have fixed the amp glow problem. More tests required. You'd think if they can fix the effective area problem in 3.1 they could have managed it for the newer version. Looks like will have to wait for v3.3....

Louise

[laser_jock99]

Any example images yet - its one of the cameras I am considering.

[Thalestris24]

Any example images yet - its one of the cameras I am considering.

Mostly because of the Glasgow weather I only have this M3. It's underexposed (only got a few subs in between clouds...) and taken in heavy lp. I also managed to kill the colour so it's not really representative. I'm quite hopeful I'll be able to produce some good images with it eventually though! I'm sure others have much better images to show.

Louise

[r3i]

Any example images yet - its one of the cameras I am considering.

Work in progress M81 from Friday night.  Hoping to get more subs for it tonight if the forecast holds good:

[Thalestris24]

Hi Mike

Nice image! Are you using Nebulosity for capture? Any problems? I'm relying on APT and the ascom driver which has been problematic...

Cheers

Louise

[jaspalchadha]

Here's one of mine

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[jaspalchadha]

taken from Stratford London 90% light pollution and shot thru street Lamps

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[r3i]

Hi Mike

Nice image! Are you using Nebulosity for capture? Any problems? I'm relying on APT and the ascom driver which has been problematic...

Cheers

Louise

Thanks Louise - yes I use Nebulosity V3 for capture & pre-processing and it's always worked well for me.

[Thalestris24]

Thanks Louise - yes I use Nebulosity V3 for capture & pre-processing and it's always worked well for me.

Ok - second question... Does Nebulosity work with Astrotortilla? I've been relying on APT + AT but if Nebulosity works with it, maybe I'll switch over.

Thanks

Louise

[r3i]

Ok - second question... Does Nebulosity work with Astrotortilla? I've been relying on APT + AT but if Nebulosity works with it, maybe I'll switch over.

Thanks

Louise

Hi Louise, yes it works with AstroTortilla.  Just a few things to note:  Before firing off a capture & solve from AT, ensure you have Nebulosity open and your camera selected.  Also make sure you haven't done any captures in Nebulosity beforehand as AT doesn't seem to like it.  Finally I've got into the habit of always closing and re-opening Nebulosity after an AT operation, as AT sets the binning in Nebulosity to x2 and in the past I've forgotten to reset it and ended up with wrongly binned images.

So to summarise, my workflow is:

1. Open Nebulosity and set the camera to QHY8L

2. Issue a slew to my target object with CdC

3. Capture & solve with AT

4. Close and re-open Nebulosity - then get it set up for image capture.

[Thalestris24]

Hi Louise, yes it works with AstroTortilla.  Just a few things to note:  Before firing off a capture & solve from AT, ensure you have Nebulosity open and your camera selected.  Also make sure you haven't done any captures in Nebulosity beforehand as AT doesn't seem to like it.  Finally I've got into the habit of always closing and re-opening Nebulosity after an AT operation, as AT sets the binning in Nebulosity to x2 and in the past I've forgotten to reset it and ended up with wrongly binned images.

Ok - thanks! I might try Nebulosity then

Looks like there _may_ be some clear skies in Glasgow tonight! But I'll stick to APT this time and see how things go.

Thanks

Louise

[Thalestris24]

Hi

A quick postscript to say that qhy sorted the ascom driver out and the qhy8l is working fine with APT now. I've since added a coma corrector and 2" lp filter. It goes without saying that I just need some clear skies to test it out properly...

Louise