Gain and Offest?

[Iceman120]

Hi all, 

So I brought myself a ZWO ASI533MC Pro, If the weather forecast stays true I should be able to get first light with it on Thursday night. Before I get out into the field, what should typical gain and offset settings be? Is it filter dependant? exposure time dependant?

I have a Optolong L-Pro and Optolong L-eXtreme

Shooting from a Bortle 8

Any info will be much appreciated

Thanks Rich

[geeklee]

34 minutes ago, Iceman120 said:

So I brought myself a ZWO ASI533MC Pro, If the weather forecast stays true I should be able to get first light with it on Thursday night. Before I get out into the field, what should typical gain and offset settings be? Is it filter dependant? exposure time dependant?

Hi Rich - When I had my ASI533, I used the Unity gain setting in the ASCOM driver - this set the gain (100) and offset.  I then adjusted exposure for the scope/lens, conditions and filter.  With a very fast scope/lens, reducing the gain can be an option = the ASCOM driver has three built in presets.  This kept things simple but as with all things, you can experiment and tweak these values. 

[Iceman120]

3 hours ago, geeklee said:

Hi Rich - When I had my ASI533, I used the Unity gain setting in the ASCOM driver - this set the gain (100) and offset.  I then adjusted exposure for the scope/lens, conditions and filter.  With a very fast scope/lens, reducing the gain can be an option = the ASCOM driver has three built in presets.  This kept things simple but as with all things, you can experiment and tweak these values. 

Hi Lee,

Thanks for the feedback, I was looking through astrobin with the 533 set in filters and i saw a lot of people using similar settings. My telescope is a Skywatcher EvoStar72ED which is F5.7. 

 

poiu-07

[geeklee]

2 hours ago, Iceman120 said:

533 set in filters and i saw a lot of people using similar settings. My telescope is a Skywatcher EvoStar72ED which is F5.7. 

If you've not tweaked these settings before or just starting with a dedicated astrocam, I'd leave it at the Unity gain setting initially.  When you're comfortable with its operation and calibration, you'll probably have some more head space to think about whether tweaking these settings will help further! 🙂

[wimvb]

At unity gain (100 setting), the camera has a substantial decrease in read noise, and a corresponding increase in dynamic range. That's why it makes sense to start with this gain. For nb imaging you may want to use a higher gain setting in order to keep the exposure time down.