Zwo asi290 8bit or 16.

[redfox1971]

Hello what bit rate should i be using for phd guiding2?

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I am pretty sure 8 bit is normal for guiding with this camera.
Does it actually work with 16 bit okay ?

Steve

[redfox1971]

3 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I am pretty sure 8 bit is normal for guiding with this camera.
Does it actually work with 16 bit okay ?

Steve

Yeah seems to be guiding ok on 16 bit.

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I do not think theres any right or wrong here and if its guiding on 16 bit and not loosing any frames then should be fine.
I will try to power my rig up if I can and see what I have set in PHD2 ( ASI290MM mini ) my rig is dismantled at moment.
I think I have used both 8 and 16 bit in the past and saw np difference,

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

To be honest when I changed to using NINA (from KStars and EKOS) I did not take much notice of the PHD setup but now I look it seems to be using 8 bit.

But I can also select 16 bit and that seems to works also but until my next session I cannot see if it makes any difference to the guiding.
My personal thoughts would be that I will now try guiding on the same night using both 8 and 16 bit and if there is no difference in the results I will stick to 8 bit as this should allow faster frame download and generally less load on whatever computer you are using.
 

Steve

Edited April 21, 2022 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Elp]

I don't think it matters for guiding, bit rate has to do with the number of distinct levels of colour or grey that can be defined from black to white, the higher the bit rate the more colours/shades in essence and the larger the file/data sizes. It's more for actual imaging to get better colour rendition, or specifically to allow for larger data information no matter the digital data type.

[vlaiv]

I switched to 16 bit and it improved my guiding (or at least that is what I perceived).

It allows for much higher SNR to be obtained in PHD2. With 8bit guiding I often had SNR in range of 20-50 - with 16 bit I can get >1000.