First toucam pic (Copernicus area)

[Garyh]

Hi all,
Well I`m more of a deepsky imager myself but having this toucam and the mars opposition getting close how can blame me for giving it a go!!
This is my very first toucam shot and is of the great copernicus crater and surrounds with my 6" newt and a 2x barlow..
Seeing was average with lots of clouds with gaps. Was hoping to have a go at mars but that side of the sky was completely clouded over :( so had some fun on the moon :)
Image is 80 frames out of 800 and the usual wavelets applied etc.
Had some good seeing on the first few attempts but didn`t realize that the Vlounge software just kept overwriting the avi ! so was lost. I know better now.
Anyways comments to my processing etc are most welcome as I am very new at this webcam thingy!
Thanks for looking guys..:thumbsup:

[iceman]

That's a great start Gary, especially for the conditions you describe.

1) Get rid of vlounge and start using k3ccdtools version 1 (or later) or virtualdub.
2) Try capturing in B&W - there's not significant colour on the moon at high resolutions and even then you really need to push the saturation.
3) Processing doesn't look too bad. It will always look a bit blown-out/over-processed if you push it too hard when the seeing wasn't up to it.

[Dennis]

Yeah – that quirky feature also snared me on my 1st night out!

That's a fine image for your 1st effort Gary – there is a lot to learn about focusing, capturing and processing and you’re off to a flying start.

When using a ToUcam, I found that using too high a Gain tended to make the images quite noisy. I experimented with the Gamma slider to cope with the extremes of black and white on the Moon.

Cheers

Dennis

[Garyh]

Thats Mike for the tips! :thumbsup: shall do in B/W next time! and capture in another program..
I might redo this image and stack the very best to see if it makes a difference.
Thanks Dennis for the comment, shall play with that gamma slider next time!
Might give vitualdub a go?

Is there anyway to save the camera settings as its a pain to have to change them everytime?
Thanks for the tips so far!..:)
cheers

[iceman]

With programs like k3ccd it will save the camera settings, or you can use a program called wcctrl which lets you define "presets" that can be loaded for a given object etc.

[maksutover]

Mike are these programs you speak of free? If so could you care to link this lost soul ?? :)

[ballaratdragons]

Gary, I use Vlounge and have never had this 'overwriting' thing you mention.

I don't even know what it is :shrug:

A trick I found in Vlounge is to have the Gain set on Zero for everything :thumbsup:

[Garyh]

Thanks Ken! for the info..I had the gain set about in the middle and the camera was on 1/50 sec at 10fps.
Maksutover ..Virtualdub is free and I have downloaded and installed it already...looks like a handy piece of software once I learn how to use it..
http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/
Had a closer look at my pic yesterday and realized I didn`t apply the wavelets to the whole image just a preview square...lol
cheers Gary