Spc900

[Markaus]

Hi Guys, My SPC900NC arrived and last night i headed out.

I connected it up and focused in on the moon 1st and with wxAstrocapture went for my first attempt. 2nd was with Saturn

Not very good so i must be doing something wrong?

1) How long should you capture for?
2) Are there any better settings with WXAstro?


Thanks again, appreciate the help

Mark

[badabing82]

Hi Mate,

I am wrestling with the same camera.

the moon shot looks like the gain is set way too high try turning it down.

The saturn shot is fine except you need more image scare what other equipment are you using ? software etc? f/ration barlowed un-unbarlowed are you using an IR/VU cut filter?

[Markaus]

Using my Lx90ACF, camera is plugged straight, no barlow etc.

Software, just the wxastro and then ran it through registax 6

I bought the ir filter with the webcam

Apart from that nothing else

[badabing82]

sounds about right ....

try using a barlow for the saturn shot which should yield f/20 it should really help bring out the detail.

settings wise i use the following, keep in mind i'm using a 8inch f/6 newt so your milage may vary.

for saturn i'm using the following settings.

shutter = 1/25
fps = 10fps
brightness = about mid way
gain = around 15-20
gamma = around 5
color = freeze / have a play with the two sliders to get the color right
contrast = around 25-30
saturation = 90 - max

give that a go and repost back, it will be good to see the results from another scope

Daniel

[Markaus]

and would i record for about 1 minute or more?

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Markaus

and would i record for about 1 minute or more?

1 minute at 10fps will give you 600 frames to play around with. If you could go to a higher frame rate, say 25fps, you'd be getting 1500 frames to use. The higher your frame rate, the crisper your pics because you're literally freezing the seeing conditions by snapping the pics quickly. However, you have to judge the conditions and remember FL you're snapping the pics at. It's a trade off between crispness and brightness....don't go too long otherwise you can affect both. At F20, what you've been given there by Daniel is a pretty good example of a setup. You can play around with it as you like, from there.

Also, the more frames you have, the more (hopefully) good pics you will have to stack and process for your final piccie.

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Not bad for a first go Mark, that moon shot is pretty good...although a bit bright.

Try setting the camera colour type to YUY2 in the settings page...it seems like these are in B&W?

Also, I have found that when you set the camera (gain, whitebalance etc) so it looks good on the screen when capturing, this is a good place to start.

Focus looks good, with the moon around, its easy to use it to focus on, then swing over to Saturn and as suggested, ramp up the scale with a 2.5 x or 3x barlow.

You are on your way now, just remember to keep that wallet open...OK?

A Good start, MUCH better than my first go.

Cheers

Chris

[Markaus]

couple of new photos from tonight..its going to take some time to master this great....

[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

awesome shots my man, I love your Saturn part 2.
I was playing with my webcam tonight as well but it was,as they say, a sucker's sky, managed to focus then cloud banks, then a break then more cloud and wind....oh them's the breaks!
Keep it up
Graham

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by graham.hobart

awesome shots my man, I love your Saturn part 2.
I was playing with my webcam tonight as well but it was,as they say, a sucker's sky, managed to focus then cloud banks, then a break then more cloud and wind....oh them's the breaks!
Keep it up
Graham

Need a couple of very large fans

[Kal (Andrew)]

Looks like you have the technique down pat now it is just a matter of playing around with capture settings to get the most out of what you have.

Mike Salway (iceman) wrote a great article a few years back which still has a lot of relevant information nowdays - you can read that article here on this website.

Been a while since I imaged with the webcam but the basic principle is to show your histogram and you want to have your exposure maxing out up at around the 90% mark to give you the best data. There are several ways you can do this and how you do it depends on the seeing conditions.

If seeing conditions are excellent you don't need too many frames, and you want good quality frames with minimal compression, so you target a lower 5-10fps. If seeing conditions are poor, you don't worry so much about image degradation due to compression and you can target more frames, say 10-25fps.

You will need to balance shutter speed and gain to get the histogram approx 90% exposed. With good seing you can use less gain and a slower shutter speed, with poor seeing you will likely use a higher gain and a faster shutter speed to try to get those rarer good frames through the atmosphere.

Best of luck!

[RobF (Rob)]

Yeah, don't expect to be conquering this imaging thing anytime soon Mark. It takes quiet tweaking of one or two variables max everytime you head out to get any sort of successful routine together. Then you'll find that Registax etc take even longer to explore and get the best out of. You've got some cracker shots there for a first effort though. All really useful and productive piece of kit to have is the trusty ToUcam.

Helps too to frequent the solar system imaging forum and ask lots of questions from the experts. Most of them have moved on to super fast dedicated cameras and RGB imaging, but will still be able to provide heaps of critique on your shots and help you along (as the guys are already doing).

[big_dav_2001 (Davin)]

Some great tips there guys, inspired me to give the webcam another go. wish me luck