Meade Deep Sky Imager

[Chubster]

Anybody had any experience of these? Are they any good. I have the toucam II and the upgrade for DSO (still want colour if poss) is more than the cost of the meade.

cheers

chub

[MartinB]

Chub, can't advise on DSI but I would advise against colour. I love colour images and sometimes RGB imaging seems a pain in the neck but you have complete control over things esp when it comes to processing. Processing images from a colour camera is a more complicated affair and they aren't really compatible with narrow band filters. Light pollution effects can be difficult to deal with and they tend to be less sensitive. Learn the ropes with mono and start RGB imaging when you feel ready, it is actually more straight forward than people would lead you to believe. I recently forked out silly money on my CCD - the colour and mono versions were the same price, I went for the mono on the very strong advice of Ian King.

[Chubster]

Cheers Martin, was just hankering after some of those cool colour pics for myself......but your advice has been noted

[Chubster]

? Can you not set a colour camera to capture in b&w then ?? Then I would have the best of both worlds ?

[MartinB]

Yes but you would have a similar effect as you would converting a colour photo to black and white. Not as good as an original mono

[FLO]

? Can you not set a colour camera to capture in b&w then ?? Then I would have the best of both worlds ?

'Colour' CCDs have built-in filters. Actually, each pixel has its own tiny filter - 50% have green filters, 25% red and 25% blue, arranged in a Bayer pattern (named after its inventor). Software algorithms then calculate/predict the correct(ish) colour. The drawbacks of Bayer filtration are reduced sensitivity, a type of colour noise that shows up as mottled false colour, limited scientific value (most of the colour is essentially guesswork) and an inability to remove the filters (you might prefer to use alternate filters).

Hence the preference for true Mono CCDs

[richard42]

i have the DSI colour version 1 and it is to be honest not much better then the toucam, the meade software is very crappy, but i have found that after a while i have got quite used to it but remember it i s a very small DOF which makes thing very difficult, but it's aving grace it that because i have a meade scope with electric focuser i can sit in my shed and have complete hands-off imaging from the same sreen able to track and move the scope and focus, if it were not for this it would have found it's way onto ebay ages ago

martin, the dsi has a way of saving the raw files which splits the colours, wouls i get better results than just saving as a jpeg?

ps this might be for sale if the sale of my scope falls through.