Jupiter w/GRS, improving

[minimalist]

Caught the GRS first time this year, under hazy but calmer skies than last time. Captured and process same as last time, 800 frames from 2000, AT6RC, ultima 2x, canon 1000D modded. Still have a tannish cast to the image, I must look into changing the color balance next time. Oh, I think I got Europa in there also.

Comments/criticism welcome

Daniel

[Psychobilly]

Hi Daniel,

Are you using the Russian guys Eos Movie Record software with the 1000D?

I still havent got round to having a go at jupiter yet... mainly because I only get about 30 minutes view of it between the trees and even then only just...

I'm interested in seeing your results with the 1000D ... i was going to tackle it with the DMK21... hmmmm....

Peter...

[brianb]

I wouldn't worry about the colour cast, in fact your effort looks fairly natural to me. Remember that Jupiter (like all objects in the solar system not illuminated by artificial light) is illuminated by the Sun, therefore sun symbol / daylight colour balance is more likely to be "right" than camera auto or attempts to set the colour balance manually. But, with a DSLR, just record RAW, then you can fiddle with the colour balance in post processing without losing anything!

[Psychobilly]

I'd be suprised if Daniel shot 2000 still frames and then stacked them in registrax......

the rotation of jupiter durign the time required would be quite noticeable..

The software gives you 768x512 video from the 1000D (Varies with other EOS cameras) by capturing the live view feed...

Peter....

[minimalist]

Thanks guys!

Yes Peter, it's the russian eos movie record software. Can't remember which version I'm using, it's one of the later ones though. But, I would love to see a comparo between using the 1000D and the dmk. The results I see from the latter are fantastic, and my skies really don't do either justice. But, I do suspect the noise of the dmk (and resolution too, since it's not a bayer matrix) to be superior to the canon. If you get a chance, I would love to see that.

As far as the frames, yes, it was actually about 2000 frames shot in about 90 sec. I am getting a bit over 22 fps out of the 1000D and the acer a150, which is not the fastest cpu out there. It's possible though that at this image scale I am blurring a bit, but with the seeing as it is, I can't really tell. Btw, you do indeed get 768x512 video, but that's at the full frame capture mode. If you start the program, you can then press the set key on the camera and you can zoom in 3x and 5x I think. The 5x mode is actually at the pixel level of the camera, and the videon in this case is 768x792 or something like that. That's what I use.

Brian, I agree, Jupiter really does have a tannish tint to it overall. But some of the pics I see that remove that tint show a wealth of other colors hidden in there, makes it better looking... I know, not very scientific, lol. As to post processing bringing that back, since the video is 8bit, it loses a lot of color information when recording from the sensor (which is 12 bits per channel). Setting the right white balance is pretty much essential to the final colors, there's not much leeway there.

In my case, I can't use the standard white balance settings, since the camera is modded. I currently use a custom white balance I set in the daylight, which gives colors very much like the daylight balance used to before modding. However, the red response still comes through stronger, which causes the color cast. I may create another custom wb to use just with Jupiter to pick out those extra colors.

One other thing I'd like to mention from playing with this software is that the liveview image is affected by the picture style you use. I usually use a neutral or faithful picture style when imaging dso's (keeps the colors fairly natural), but in the liveview video Jupiter looks a bit washed out... this is mostly due to my low contrast from the scope. Right now I use portrait, which gives a bit more punch to the colors, and increases contrast just one notch. I may play with setting a custom picture style at some point, if it helps cut down on my processing.

Ok, one more thing and I'll shut up. The HD video from the 500D should be superior to this. Not only do you get a larger frame (1920x1080 I think) to play with, I believe the color encoding scheme is better also. I can't remember exactly what it is, but is definitely better than mjpeg. I'd really like to see someone play with that as well.

Daniel