Hi All, I've found myself the owner of one of these SLR-like digital cameras... I say SLR like because it looks like one, but not sure you can take the lens off. Anyone have any experience with using thes for Astropurposes?
I've got the Canon S3 IS 6mp, which is similar. An advanced compact.
So far I've only found it good for moon shots through the EP.
How long an exposure can you take?
Mines only 15 seconds. Ok for wide field constellations. Just.
Didn't Sonia just buy one of these? She might have more of an idea.
I have the S7000, its similar to yours. It is reasonable but severely limited. To be honest I wouldnt waste your time, but thats my opinion. The noise is very high at low light levels on these cameras, I am always getting pissed off with having to severely edit images all the time. No doubt you will give it a go, and good on you for trying but it's no SLR and its no Astro camera. Good luck..
Not that anyone probably cares with a 2 week old thread, but...
I have a similar S5600 and as Andrew mentions it's noisy at high ISO's - low light levels. I stacked frames, I took dark frames but it's still noisy. No good for deep sky but you may get away with planets/moon through the eyepiece.
Have a noisy meteor picture from the 5600 while I'm at it. The thing does work, I even captured the comet with it but it looks like a weak analogue TV picture in all the snow Lol.
All my comet images are done with the S7000, same as the 6500 I am led to believe. I find it very limiting to its 15second exposure and high noise levels, its okay for the general full sunshine sort of stuff. I am getting sick of overprocessing to try and get any detail out of it even with stacking its noisy. I think I have pushed it to its limit. with astrophotography and lightning photography as well as general pics.
I have a similar S5600 and as Andrew mentions it's noisy at high ISO's - low light levels. I stacked frames, I took dark frames but it's still noisy. No good for deep sky but you may get away with planets/moon through the eyepiece.
I've the same S5600 and the high ISOs are as noisy as and kill the shots, stacking pics at lower ISOs works somewhat better
As Astroman said, their a good camera for general use but their very limited for astro, 15 secs is the maximum available for exposures.
This is a stack of 5 of the comet with no other processing at ISO 400, still too noisy.
That comet pic is not bad actually but I'd still want to stretch the levels. I reckon it's comparable to film.
I did some experimenting last night, just out the front of the house and found something very weird. All exposures were set to the max 15 seconds. It doesn't seem to matter much where you set the ISO levels, be it 64, 200, 1600 or whatever, if you stretch the levels in photoshop to look the same brightness for each pic, the noise level turns out the same! In fact the 64-200 ISO frames had more hot pixels than the ISO 1600 frames! That ain't right is it? There's something screwy going on here.
I did some experimenting last night, just out the front of the house and found something very weird. All exposures were set to the max 15 seconds. It doesn't seem to matter much where you set the ISO levels, be it 64, 200, 1600 or whatever, if you stretch the levels in photoshop to look the same brightness for each pic, the noise level turns out the same! In fact the 64-200 ISO frames had more hot pixels than the ISO 1600 frames! That ain't right is it? There's something screwy going on here.
That does sound weird, I'll have to check that out.
Have you tried taking any shots in RAW? I'm not that savvy with processing so I haven't tried.
I've been using a borrowed Fuji Finepix S5500 for a week or two, and it's certainly a step up from my el-cheapo Kodak automatic. Comet was OK in night mode at 3-sec, f2.9, but when I cranked it up to 15-sec, all I got extra for my trouble was a trillion extra hot pixels & star trails, with no gain in comet brightness. Seems the f/ratio cranked up in synch, so I got longer exposure with less aperture - thanks for nothing!
Tried but couldn't independently set aperture - perhaps it's just that I haven't mastered the controls yet. Anyway, I suppose it's all about making the best of what you've got. With the low light shots there is a lot of noise that has to be dealt with, and I found that the Noiseware program (freeware version, limited to jpegs only) gives me satisfactory results, after tweaking in PS. Downloads at:
I've attached 3 images showing processing of one of my comet shots, taken at 3-sec, f2.9 in Night Mode: the original image; after tweaking in PS; and after applying Noiseware luminance filter.
Have also attached an image of the Pleiades (3-sec at f2.9), probably about the best I'll do with the camera. No tracking, so anything I do above 3-sec begins to trail. Have fun, Robert_T!
Rob_k... to set the aperture in Manual mode hold the exposure compensation button down (button with shaded triangles below the on/off switch) and use the up/down buttons for the menu to change the ap setting. I found 15secs better than the 3sec night mode with the ap as low as I can...F3.2 on mine.
I've tried raw, but only use irfanview to convert to tiff and the images go a bit strange (even more grainy) when they are dark. I think I either need to find a photoshop plugin or get a better conversion program. The one that comes with the camera doesn't make any sense to me.
Thanks for the replies on this Guys... sorry, bit rude of me to post a question and then disappear for several weeks OS. Seems to confirm my suspicions it ain't no astro-camera. Works great for holiday snaps and macro photos though