[RickS (Rick)]

I have been reading the Handbook of Astronomical Image Processing by Berry and Burnell, so in the absence of any imaging opportunities I tried using their Basic CCD Test procedure on my SX H18 and QHY-12 tonight.

The results look reasonable and reflect what I see in practice: both have similar gain/well-depth but the QHY-12 (Sony sensor) is much less noisy than the H18 (Kodak). You can see why some people use the Sony sensors without darks, although it is still a good idea to at least use bias frames to remove the offset.

If anybody is interested:
QHY-12: 0.6 e-/ADU gain, 8 e- RMS read noise, 0.006 e-/pixel/sec dark current
H18: 0.6 e-/ADU gain, 13.6 e- RMS read noise, 0.095 e-/pixel/sec dark current

I might have a go at the Advanced CCD Test next, but I need to construct an appropriate low light source first.

Cheers,
Rick.