Which software for Raw mode?

[Daz1969]

Hi all, Have just found out that Raw mode is a good thing!

Question is what software do i use to control my camera with? I shall be using a Celestron Neximage(Like a toucam pro)

Cheers in advance you clever people:icon_salut:

Daz

[Parallax]

Daz

The RAW mode that most people are talking about refers to dSLR cameras (Canon, Nikon etc). The Neximage does not support this. However, there is a mod you can do to the Neximage which will give you a sort of RAW mode. The mod involves replacing the firmware in the camera so that it thinks it is a Philips SPC900NC camera. This is easy to do with some free software that you can download. The mod bypasses (some of) the compression routines in the camera and also bypasses the debayering routine (this makes the output image appear b/w and you have to do the debayering yourself - again, there is s/w which allows you to do this). This all probably sounds very confusing and to be honest I did the mod but didn't find it worth the effort, although some people do say it makes a difference.

Steve

[beamish]

Daz follow this link and se if it's any use to you

http://www.burri-web.org/bm98/soft/wcrmac/

Karlo

[Daz1969]

Thankyou guys! That has explained an awful lot.

I was a tad confused before!

Cheers

DAZ

[Tim]

Hi.

I have a Neximage and have modded it to run in RAW mode. The link to the app needed to do that can be found on Celestrons site under the neximage links.

I found there was a bit of improvement, especially on hard targets like Mars.

The best software to work with the raw files I found to be K3CCD tools. You will have various debayer options with it, including fast and hi quality. You can also just take the luminance if desired.

There are some limitations to RAW mode, for instance, you will only be able to capture RAW images at 5fps, meaning you will have to expose for a lot longer to get the same high percentage of quality frames that you would running at say 15 or 25 fps, and on some targets, rotation will therefore be a problem. Also file sizes can be huge. K3CCD has no problems workign with large files, but I found that registax would crash.

Hope that helps a bit.

TJ

[Daz1969]

Thanks TJ, Appreciate the info!

Daz

[beamish]

Good point about the file sizes TJ, however with re to Registax , this will change as of the 28th when v5 will be available, worth considering.

Karlo