ZWO Cameras

[newbie alert]

5 minutes ago, adyj1 said:

I'm as anally retentive as the next pedant, but if you're selling to the masses it is probably better to use an inaccurate term that everyone understands and helps sell your product than it is to be accurate and confuse people....

Why? I'd expect the professionals to be abit more...Professional 

As a newbie it's confusing enough as it is

[johninderby]

Re: Hoover or hoovering.

Doesn't mean what I remember it meaning ie: generic term for a vacuum cleaner or vacuuming. Looked up the definition.🙀🙀🙀

Derogatory term for taking advantage of others by taking more food, drugs, beverages, than paid for or borrowing things and rarely returning them. 1. I was ...

And a load of other meanings that can’t be mentioned on a family forum.

Edited September 12, 2021 by johninderby

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, johninderby said:

Re: Hoover or hoovering.

Doesn't mean what I remember it meaning ie: generic term for a vacuum cleaner or vacuuming. Looked up the definition.🙀🙀🙀

Derogatory term for taking advantage of others by taking more food, drugs, beverages, than paid for or borrowing things and rarely returning them. 1. I was ...

And a load of other meanings that can’t be mentioned on a family forum.

Ah, now I know what a photon hoover is. I’d better not use this phrase on this family friendly forum again.

Sorry f/2 owners if I’ve offended you in the past. I didn’t know.

(😉😉)

Edited September 12, 2021 by wimvb

[johninderby]

I won’t be using the term hoovering in public ever again.🙀

[wimvb]

8 minutes ago, johninderby said:

I won’t be using the term hoovering in public ever again.🙀

Any further comment on the term would be more appropriate in the ”bad wordplay jokes” thread on this forum. I’ll refrain.

[tomato]

Back to the OP's question, there are excellent images being captured with both CCD and CMOS cameras, other factors such as the scope set up, sky quality and how may clear nights you have at your disposal could certainly influence your decision. I started out with CCD, but now have CMOS  cameras, but I still use both. My latest project is a dual system attempting to use a CCD for  capturing luminance and a CMOS OSC for the colour.

IMHO ZWO are decent quality cameras, you wont go far wrong if you go with them, or any of the other established suppliers for that matter.. 

[gorann]

11 hours ago, iantaylor2uk said:

I have a ZWO 071MC Pro camera and have never seen amp glow on it. I've been very pleased with the camera. I also have a ZWO 120 mini MM guide camera. If you go the ZWO camera route you can also use an ASI Air Pro which makes life much easier in many ways.

If you have taken a dark image with an ZWO ASI071MC and stretched it you will see a clear "amp glow". The 071 comes with the older generation Sony chips, the newer ones sold by ZWO that do not show "amp glow" are the 533, 2400, 2600 and 6200. The 183, 294, 071 and 1600 all have amp glow, but it is easily handled by subtracting darks.

Edited September 12, 2021 by gorann

[Scooot]

On 16/08/2021 at 11:53, geeklee said:

I have the 183MM and this heavily stretched 180s master dark would give you a few moments of pause (at the very least):

Here's a 180s Ha frame from the 183MM and a Samyang 135:

And here's the calibrated version (just with a Master Dark)

At 1:1

It took a while to get used to compared to my other cameras but I'm confident the master darks will always calibrate this out.

The 183MC-Pro looks the same (or similar) from what I've seen.

Hi, I had a problem with my Long exposure darks after I’d purchased my new camera. It turned out to be a light leak in the extendable spacer I was using to set the correct back focus. I discovered where on the spacer it leaks and I’ve now taped it up with masking tape which fixed it. It took a lot of testing to find it though.

[iantaylor2uk]

1 hour ago, gorann said:

If you have taken a dark image with an ZWO ASI071MC and stretched it you will see a clear "amp glow". The 071 comes with the older generation Sony chips, the newer ones sold by ZWO that do not show "amp glow" are the 533, 2400, 2600 and 6200. The 183, 294, 071 and 1600 all have amp glow, but it is easily handled by subtracting darks.

I stand corrected, but I can’t see any circumstances under which you would want to stretch a dark frame.

Edited September 12, 2021 by iantaylor2uk
Typo

[wimvb]

10 minutes ago, iantaylor2uk said:

I stand corrected, but I can’t see any circumstances under which you would want to stretch a dark frame.

Only to get a clear view of anything that you wish wouldn't be there. Never in the calibration process. The same goes for stretching flats. You only do it to evaluate them.

[Andrew_B]

3 hours ago, gorann said:

If you have taken a dark image with an ZWO ASI071MC and stretched it you will see a clear "amp glow". The 071 comes with the older generation Sony chips, the newer ones sold by ZWO that do not show "amp glow" are the 533, 2400, 2600 and 6200. The 183, 294, 071 and 1600 all have amp glow, but it is easily handled by subtracting darks.

The starburst glow (or sausage glow since I like that name!) doesn't seem to be a problem with DSLRs so presumably cameras based on the sensors from consumer cameras should be free of that glow compared to those based on chips intended for machine vision and surveillance cameras.

Not wishing to derail the thread but does anyone have a link to a good guide for how to do things like calibration frames etc to deal with amp glow and fixed pattern noise in lower cost CMOS cameras? I want to try some deep sky imaging with my little ASI178MM (only used it as a guide camera so far) but the workflow is clearly rather different to what I'm used to.

[Budgie1]

4 minutes ago, Andrew_B said:

The starburst glow (or sausage glow since I like that name!) doesn't seem to be a problem with DSLRs so presumably cameras based on the sensors from consumer cameras should be free of that glow compared to those based on chips intended for machine vision and surveillance cameras.

Not wishing to derail the thread but does anyone have a link to a good guide for how to do things like calibration frames etc to deal with amp glow and fixed pattern noise in lower cost CMOS cameras? I want to try some deep sky imaging with my little ASI178MM (only used it as a guide camera so far) but the workflow is clearly rather different to what I'm used to.

Amp glow (star burst glow, sausage glow, sensor glow or what ever you want to call it) generally isn't an issue with DSLR cameras but you still need calibration frames.

THIS is quite a good guide about how to create the different types of calibration frames.

What you need does depend on your camera though, some need Darks, Flats, Dark-flats & Bias. Others, like DLSR's can get away without using Darks but will need Bias frames as a replacement. My ZWO ASI294MC Pro has problems with residual amp-glow when Bias frames are used, so with this camera I only use Darks, Flats & Dark-Flats. It's a case of seeing what works best for your camera because it's not a "one size fits all".

Fixed pattern noise or walking noise can be greatly reduced or eliminated by dithering between subs, either manually or by using the Dither function in your guiding software.