Canon 7D Mk2 - Anyone using one yet?

[Psychobilly]

I ran some basic thermal test on the 7D II last night using my standard 120s exposure with 15s pause between subs until the reported sensor temp was stable for 20 subs  for the "warming" phase curve  and then  1s exposure with 59s pause to get the cooling phase curve...

The temp resolution measured by the camera and available in the exif  is 1C  so that gives rise to the discrete steps If you curve fit it in your mind you get the typical exponential  curve and the same for the cooling curve...

Ambient temp was 25C and I had run 8 x 120s subs before recording the data - BYEOS hung - the camera ignored a request to transfer the images from the camera to the PC and BYEOS timed out after 239s and stopped the sequence.. I missed this happening  for a few mins...

My experience is that these curves generally be translated along the y axis for different ambient temperatures but remember this was indoors in still air...

Just doing another test run and testing BYEOS on the HP Stream 7 at the same time.. 58s with 2s Pause Warm up   1s with 59s cool down  If it works I'll graph the results from that one...

[Psychobilly]

Finally got to point it at the sky tonight - not ideal with the bright moon and passing snow showers... Sensor temp stayed within a degree or two over a good few hours... used it with the 200/2.8L and 77mm IDAS P2 Filter on the NEQ-6  unguided shooting a mix of 60 and 120s subs at ISO800 @ f3.5

DSS 3.3.4 seems to handle the raws OK... and I used BYEOS 3.1.2 for camera control which tonight didn't miss a beat...

Quick and dirty process before hitting the sack....

Pacman 7DII 200L at f3-5 IDAS P2 43x120s ISO800 QS by psmithuk, on Flickr

Peter...

[frostynixon]

Interesting read! I think in the end you will not come across removing the ir cut filter in order to make it a decent AP camera.

[Psychobilly]

Forgot to add...

Lights only no Darks, Bias or Flats...

Peter...

[SkyExplorer]

Looking good.  I'll be interested to see what the final image looks like and also if you think it was easier to process due to the better sensor.

[griz11]

I'm lucky I have pretty dark sky here. Although when I imaged Orion it was in the east where the only sky glow is. I shot it with the 7D a few days earlier and there is no comparison between the two. I'll be going to Houston in 2.5 weeks so I'll give it a good high LP test then. I have the Astronomik CLS clip in it seems to work fairly well I don't use it at my place but at my brothers its a necessity. Support is still pretty poor. I ran into another problem last night. Tested the work around tonight and had much better luck with it. Dcraw still doesn't have support. Saw an update the other day on PI for dslr_raw but it wasn't for that purpose. I'll have to try that DSS beta although I have them working pretty well in PI now except for the washed out color. The calibration values are way off. I figure by the time I get everything else working to perfection the support will be there. Meanwhile I'm still able to process pics and use the camera so its not too bad. I don't do any unattended stuff so if something does go wrong I can catch it. I did hook up a sony action cam to my phone so I can keep an eye on the mount inside the house. Lots of critters here I don't want any chewed up cables  or my cameras hitting on something. Kinda dim but it works ok. Clouds moved back in tonight just as I finished polar align with PHD2 for the first time. Pretty cool feature and once I did that the tracking was spot on all night. Oh well a couple of days and we are supposed to have 4-5 more clear nights.

Shot that the same night as the Orion shot. First night out with the MkII. 1000% better than the 7D with the same lens and exposure. None of the wispy nebulosity showed up with the 7D at that exposure length.

Griz