After months of struggling with this new camera finally the host of issues are resolved. The camera is rock solid now but the process took 4 mother board revisions, a linear external power supply, and resolution of an incompatibility with the Mount Hub Pro-compact due to a grounding issue. In any case I guess this is what one gets as an early adopter. Anyone contemplating the camera can be sure that it works as advertised (now) but beware that you need a very clean power supply (my switching supplies would not operate the camera) and the USB is very sensitive to cooling demands and will try to draw power however it may. The MHP-c grounds in a normal way but the SX-46 does not like this (my Moravian camera had no issue, but the power current requirements are a lot less). I now use the MHP-c to power an external relay to control the camera. This solved the grounding issue. Images are quite clean and download rapidly.
EDIT: I have been remiss in forgetting to mention that my equipment is located at Heaven's Mirror Observatory in Yass. Martin Pugh has been an invaluable asset in helping me with numerous technical issues both optical and with the SX-46!
This is a straight RGB image of about 3 hours each channel. (TEC180FL + flattener) I could find no benefit from the luminance I captured. I probably could benefit from more blue. The Astronomik DeepSky filters capture about 30% less light than the older blue Astronomic Type 2c filters I'm more used to in my previous camera.
This is a tough object to stretch. After many failed attempts I finally got the masked stretch in Pix to operate without making crazy looking stars. I finished the stretch with the HT tool. I wish I could have gotten more blue into the fainter regions.....
Full version is on Astrobin which for some reason changes the feel of the image in a way I don't appreciate. In Pix and Photoshop there is more "warmth." I uploaded a full resolution png; the initial result looks too black in background and background star colour too flat. The 2nd version I uploaded is better but still lacking compared to what I see on my monitor before uploading. Does anyone else have this issue with Astrobin?
My commiserations on all the issues you have faced but the final outcome is impressive!
I downloaded a copy of the image from Astrobin and it doesn't contain an ICC colour profile. That may be the cause of some of your colour inconsistencies. Astrobin used to strip ICC Profiles but that was fixed some time ago. IIRC, PixInsight doesn't know how to embed an ICC profile in a PNG file so if you want to use PNG format you might need to fix that with Photoshop.
Rick, I actually saved the png from CS-5. I just checked the profile and it is sRGB IEC61966-2.1 on the image. I can reassign it to Adobe RGB, or other if you think that would prove useful. Since a .tif cannot be uploaded to Astrobin I assumed (incorrectly?) that a png file would be better than any jpg, no? What do you upload?
Rick, I actually saved the png from CS-5. I just checked the profile and it is sRGB IEC61966-2.1 on the image. I can reassign it to Adobe RGB, or other if you think that would prove useful. Since a .tif cannot be uploaded to Astrobin I assumed (incorrectly?) that a png file would be better than any jpg, no? What do you upload?
Should I reassign to AdobeRGB and reup?
Hi Peter,
In that case the profile is getting stripped off somewhere between your upload and my download. I just did a quick test and the same thing happened, so perhaps Astrobin is broken again. I'll see if I can find out...
I normally upload a reasonable quality JPEG file and keep the lossless versions for printing
These days I suspect that AdobeRGB is a better lowest common denominator profile than sRGB. Even cheap LCD screens have a reasonably wide gamut.
A fine image Peter and an interesting discussion on the issues with the ICC profiles. I’ve been looking at this lately myself with my Astrobin posts as well so it’s good to track theses discussions. You’ve done well with the RGB data here showing some nice distribution of neubulosity across the image.
Thanks Rodney, Kevin, Colin, and Martin! Your comments are much appreciated.
I re-upped a Adobe RGB1998 and it has a completely different look compared to opening the same image in Pix or CS-5. I downloaded the jpg from Astrobin (which shows same Adobe RGB profile)and opened it in CS-5 and it is VERY comparable to the image I uploaded. Then I opened the image with a different windows view program (ImageGlass) and it looks just like the browser displayed image (Firefox). So is this some sort of Win10 issue? Is there an adjustment in windows to correct this?
I re-upped a Adobe RGB1998 and it has a completely different look compared to opening the same image in Pix or CS-5. I downloaded the jpg from Astrobin (which shows same Adobe RGB profile)and opened it in CS-5 and it is VERY comparable to the image I uploaded. Then I opened the image with a different windows view program (ImageGlass) and it looks just like the browser displayed image (Firefox). So is this some sort of Win10 issue? Is there an adjustment in windows to correct this?
A lot of applications (including browsers) either don't do colour management or don't do it correctly and this isn't just restricted to Windows 10.
I saved the 4 images and they all look normal on my machine. So, what is different when say CS-5 displays an image compared to when a browser displays an image? What is making them appear different?
Here is a little comparison....a screen cap of the same image side by side. one in Photoshop, the other ImageGlass (which looks very much like the image displays in Firefox). The color is more muted and background is odd.
I saved the 4 images and they all look normal on my machine. So, what is different when say CS-5 displays an image compared to when a browser displays an image? What is making them appear different?
I'm fairly sure that Photoshop uses an Adobe developed colour management system. The browsers are probably using the Windows API or some other less well developed implementation. Some older versions of browsers don't do colour management at all and this varies between platforms as well.
If only the camera had worked as it should have from day 1! I guess this hobby makes all of us beta testers! How rare is it that anything goes as expected?
But, I will say this, Terry Platt gives phenomenal personal attention to every problem.
The article you quoted was very helpful with the recommendation to save every internet image as sRGB. I upped a new sRGB to Astrobin and the improvement is quite striking. What formerly appeared (to me from Astrobin through Firefox) looked a bit desaturated but is now pretty normal. One can only guess what anybody else actually sees!
The article you quoted was very helpful with the recommendation to save every internet image as sRGB. I upped a new sRGB to Astrobin and the improvement is quite striking. What formerly appeared (to me from Astrobin through Firefox) looked a bit desaturated but is now pretty normal. One can only guess what anybody else actually sees!
I'm glad it was helpful, Peter. Images in a wide gamut colour space like AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB will look drab if (mis)interpreted as sRGB so I guess it is still the safe choice.