Anyone tried "lucky imaging" with a 5Dmk2

[Moonhawk]

I have just got a canon 5D mk2 and it has HD movie capture mode. I was wondering if anyone had tried using it like a webcam for capturing movies of the planets and processing in registax?

I havent had a chance to try it yet as my scope is in storage.

[Milamber]

The Lucky Imaging cameras have about 4000 pixels, and image at fps in the thousands...

Arthur

[Moonhawk]

The Lucky Imaging cameras have about 4000 pixels, and image at fps in the thousands...

Arthur

The definitions of "lucky imaging" that I can find seem to include only the fact that many frames are taken and the best ones are combined (i.e. those where the distorting effects of the atmosphere are at their minimum). They say nothing about how many pixels the camera should have - nor the frame rate at which the images are captured. Therefore webcam imaging, followed by processing in say registax is a form of lucky imaging.

My question was whether anyone had tried replacing their webcam with a 5dmk2 running in HD movie capture mode.

[Keithp]

That'll be one of the first things I try with mine now I can hook it all up the scope.

Regards

Keithp

[jgs001]

I think the crop factor is going to be a problem. The crop factor on the 5dmk2 (I think it's 1.6x or APS-C sensor, same as the 450d) compared to the 8.5x of the webcam. This means getting image scale, and therefore the planet covering any significant portion of the sensor is problematic at best. I have tried a couple of shots of Venus using my 450d (just to see if it would work) and I got a passable result... but I had to use 20x worth of barlow and TC to get any image scale at all. By the time I'd stacked that lot together I was having to push the ISO right to the limit and hope my tracking was up to the job at the shutter speeds I could get.

I'm sure it'll do a good job on the moon, as a whole moon shot though.

[Moonhawk]

That'll be one of the first things I try with mine now I can hook it all up the scope.

Regards

Keithp

I'm dying to try it out - especially since the new firmware update for the 5D allows full manual control over the movie capture mode. I'm not sure how the 5Ds sensor sensitivity compares to say a toucam - but the larger pixels on the 5D's sensor should help with noise.

[Moonhawk]

I think the crop factor is going to be a problem. The crop factor on the 5dmk2 (I think it's 1.6x or APS-C sensor, same as the 450d) compared to the 8.5x of the webcam. This means getting image scale, and therefore the planet covering any significant portion of the sensor is problematic at best.

The 5D mk2 is full frame - so yes this is probably going to be an issue on the planets.

[jgs001]

Ah full frame... even more so...

[Milamber]

"Lucky Imaging" as a phrase was coined by Dublin University to describe their method of deep space imaging. In a lecture to the QCUIAG people a couple of years ago, the instigator of the (uni) program thanked that group (QCUIAG) for their work, without which they (the uni) would not have been inspired to this branch of research. Since then, it has become a bit ragged as a phrase.

Arthur

[NickH]

Having spoken to Dr Nicholas Law at Caltech who wrote up on Lucky Imaging for his PhD thesis, it's a term which the amateur community doesn't really use as much as the professional one. They thought it was some groundbreaking thing, and amazingly was still not really that well known in the pro domain. I did a demo at Caltech using some Solar image data, showing them the seeing. and the raw video footage, before hitting the wavelets in Registax...

Their exact words were "holy .****... do that again".... :-)

It's quite amazing how seperated from what the amateur domain software is doing, many professional astronomers are..hopefully that is changing now for the better.

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~optics/Lucky_Web_Site/index.htm

amazingly Time magazine featured it as an innovation of the year in 2007, shame they didn't bother to ask anyone with a copy of Registax years earlier heh!

[arad85]

Their exact words were "holy .****... do that again".... :-)

It's quite amazing how seperated from what the amateur domain software is doing, many professional astronomers are..hopefully that is changing now for the better.

Amazing what you can do on a relatively low budget and driven by the technology around you. I have to say, I've been incredibly impressed with the achievements that have come from back yard astronomers. OK, you may need to invest in some serious (for amateur pockets) equipment to get the best images, but the quality that can be obtained using the software and hardware for the money invested in astrophotography is - to me - mindblowing...

[dph1nm]

Hey chaps, be fair on us professionals. Lucky imaging needed a new design of CCD camera with essentially zero read noise before it could be used on most objects which professionals might be interested in.

NigelM

[NickH]

It's the QE etc I guess which stopped it. The ICX285 being interline (probbably the lowest read noise of the popular CCD's) initially some thought was an issue, but the way it gets the high QE using microlensing, and the results possible, I think have proved what a valuable CCD that is, now that 20FPS versions are coming more and more common.

Had many chats with Caltech about this, and they are now investigating amateur CCD tech