SPC900NC Upgrade

[acme]

Hi,

I have a SPC900NC and I would like to upgrade to the DMK21 mono, the question is this, is the DMK going to show £280 pounds worth of difference. I hate wasting money but I do want to move on from the webcam.

Advice and opinions most welcome..

Acme...

[Cornelius Varley]

The SPC900NC and the DMK21 share the same sensor so there probably not much difference in a single frame image. The big advantage the DMK has of the webcam is the framerate, a webcam can shoot at about 5 or 10 fps without compression whereas the DMK has a maximum framerate of 60fps uncompressed, so allowing more frames to be captured in a short period of time. The high framerate is also handy when focussing, no having to change the framerate to a higher value to focus and then back down to 5 - 10 fps to capture the AVI. The DMK is also a true USB2.0 device, the SPC900 is not.

Peter

[acme]

Cornelius,

Do you think the extra cost involved for the DMK is justified over what the SPC900NC can do.

Acme

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

As I understand it, the SPC900NC does indeed have the same CCD, but with a colour mask (the DMK is monochrome). This increases sensitivity and sharpness in the DMK, apart from the frame rate issues.

From what I see on this forum, people with my kind of scope but a DMK produce better images than I do with my SPC900NC (though they also need a filter wheel for colour). Whether or not this is worth the extra money is another issue.

[Ant]

I have both camera's, DMK21 and the SPC900NC.

The extra 50 fps makes a world of difference. Personally I think it IS worth the extra.

But you can still get some cracking shots with the SPC.

It's very easy to GB's of data though with the DMK

Ant

[Cornelius Varley]

Cornelius,

Do you think the extra cost involved for the DMK is justified over what the SPC900NC can do.

Acme

Yes. If you assume that the SPC900 is shooting at 10 fps you can take six times as many AVIs with the DMK over an imaging session. A 2000 frame takes about 35 seconds to complete on the DMK and over 3 minutes on the webcam.

Peter

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I find that on Saturn in particular, useful frame rate is limited to some extent by exposure time. Going to 60 fps limits the nomber of photons per pixel. On bright objects like Mars I would love to have the faster frame rate given by the DMK