WebCam Imaging (SC1)

[daz]

Have posted this in here so that other newcomers to imaging can hopefully pick up and follow.....

Tonight was pretty clear with seeing at about 7/10 (Pickering), a few whispy clouds and usual village LP. So, no excuse not to have a crack at Mars.....

Unless, of course, you cannot get a single image to appear!! I tried every combination of eyepieces and barlows, from prime focus to using a second barlow tube as an extender, and still nothing. I ran the gain and contrast settings up and down the scales. Still nothing. This is using K3CCD V2.

Is there some other settings I need to look at? The settings for the port and Amp were all default.

Frustrating ain't the word!!

Any help you seasoned imagers can offer would be really appreciated

Ta

[OXO]

Hi Daz,

Firstly if you haven't already is to test your camera during the Day esp using K3ccdtools 2 as i cant get my cameras to work with it. If you get no image say with the Len's on or off then download K3ccdtool 1 this works all the time for me. I assume your using a Toucam Pro?. Also dont forget that you can setup your Capture device on the top left of the K3ccdtools screen next to file open/save. Select your device and set it to 640x480 or whatever the highest resolution it goes for captureing Avi files.

Secondly, getting an image onto the CCD Chip can be a pain in the butt to say the least esp when your just getting into using the camera with a planet. The best way to do this is to centre say Mars in the middle of your high power eyepiece first then pop in your Webcam, Make sure the gain setting are high nr full, brightness 70% and settings are not on Auto. Using these settings if Mars is even near the Ccd chip you will see a faint glow on your screen plus when you get Mars on the Chip you can focus until you get the smallest image.

Another little trick i used to use was after centering the object in the Ep and not seeing the object come off the chip on screen is to gently tap the telescope this will let you know if your near the object with the webcams chip.

Next, Whilst Mars is on the Screen lower your Gain setting's until you see some detail having made sure you have focused as mentioned before. Now alter the brightness levels until you see a nice sharp limb on the planets disc.

The best frame rate is 5fps this will give you slightly better resolution than say 10fps less frames for stacking but better quality frames you can get away with 10fps but 5fps is deff worth it. Some say in bad seeeing it's best to use 10fps but from my experience this is not the case at all.

When your happy with your image on the screen start recording your Avi file(movie) if tracking permits get a minimum of 400 frames and a Max of 2500 frames depending on what your imaging IE: Rotation of the planets differ each time thus if you did 2500 frames of say Jupiter then you would end up with a slightly blurred image after stacked the rotation of the planet.

The best way to practice is imaging the Moon it's big so no problems getting it on the CCD chip and focussing is easy remember to get a nice sharp limb.

Hope that helps Daz.

James

[daz]

Thanks James, I'll d/l K3 Version 1 and try that.

You're right, getting an image on the chip is a pain in the butt!!!

[russ]

Hi Daz,

It can be a bit frustrating but as James has pointed out, there's plenty you can do to make it easier.

There's not much i can add to James's post, besides which i'm hardly an expert anyway. These tips may help too.

Tip 1 - You'll need a parfocal ring or permenent marker/tipex for this tip. I initially used a cheapy 10mm Skywatcher eyepiece for this trick as it didn't matter if the barrel was permenently marked. I now use my Celestron 9mm Ortho. It's really well suited to the job because of it's tiny field of view. Centering the object in this eyepiece puts it on the chip everytime.

Make the moon your target (although you could do it the day on a terrestrial target). Centre it up in the scope and pop in the Toucam. Now follow the tips James gave for focus, gain and brightness. When you have a nicely focused moon take out the Toucam. Now go through your eyepiece collection to find an eyepiece which reaches focus without using the focuser. You can move the eyepiece up and down in the draw tube but you cannot touch the focuser.

When you find a suitable eyepiece, tighten it in the draw tube at the point it reaches focus. Now mark the barrel with a permenent marker or if using the parfocal ring, tighten the grub screw.

If possible try to use a medium to high power eyepiece. This has the added benefit of acting as the centering eyepiece too. Which now means you'll hopefully have an object that is not only on the chip but also within a whisker of being focused.

Tip 2 - Follow James's tip for setting the resolution to 640x480. This gives a bigger area for finding the object and while you get a good focus.

But when you are ready to shoot the AVI switch to a resolution 358x288. This has 4 benefits.

Firstly - you are still shooting at the same resolution as 640x480, only its taken a crop of the central portion.

Secondly - the AVI's are greatly reduced in size. A 700 frame 640x480 AVi will require approx 350Mb of HDD space per AVI. It's very easy to gobble 10GB of HDD space in one night. 358x288 will greatly reduce the AVI size, bringing it down to approx 100Mb.

Thirdly - because the size of data coming down the USB cable is greatly reduced, you can now shoot at a frame rate of 10fps with reduced compression and thus improved image quality.

Fourth - Because the AVI is smaller in physical size, Registax (or more importantly the PC) can process it much faster. This is a huge benefit if you try to process using a slower laptop.

Regards

Russ

[Ant]

I found that getting the object on the chip was extremely hard - some nights i actually gave up!

Keep at Daz, it is worth it in the end! The tips that James and Russ have given you will help no end!

Ant

[Jamie]

James / Russ cheers for the tips as i think following some of these will help

in MY webcaming.

[OXO]

Your welcome

I was in the same boat as you guy's not so long ago but i learnt from Ant and Russ most of these tip's thanks guy's. It all sounds complicated at first but once you have been out a few times is really quite easy the hard part is finding those clear skies..

James

[daz]

Thanks fella's Plenty to try / play with

Jamie - I'll let you know how I get on....

[Ant]

To be once you have the settings all sorted these don;t change much fromm one session to the next. So the only problem then becomes getting the object on the chip.

Ant

[Jamie]

I don't find getting the object on the chip that hard i use my 9ml double cross hair reticle centre the image on that

then slowly take it out then pop in the webcam and its right in the middle of the screen.

ITS blumming FOCUSING THATS MY PROBLEM.

I think once i find the best focus point i will just mark the draw tube.

[daz]

Jamie, it's also my focuser as well. Standard cheap jobby with inbuilt image shift as a free bonus!!

I'm trying to raise some cash for a crayford from TS, as this will really help I think.

[Ant]

the crayford from TS has NO image shioft whatsoever, fantastic improvement over the standard jobby.

Ant

[OXO]

Daz,

Your right there my 8" Skywatcher is the same as yours so i know were your coming from, i tend to have the focusser's focus lock just scraping the focus tube this helps a little with backlash believe it or not :)

JAMES