Quote:
Originally Posted by Slawomir
Thank you Ray and your patience with my questions 
Actually I was thinking of a single sub only, not a stack.
With gain settings to maximise well depth, wouldn't read noise in 1600 go up as well making it about on pair with ICX814/834 utilised in some more expensive cameras? Then, dynamic range per single sub shouldn't be less in the 1600?
For example MLX814 from FLI has 2e read noise, while QSI claims that their camera with ICX834 (smaller pixels than ICX814) has intrinsic noise of 1.6e RMS. |
I would say that, at low gain, the 1600 looks a lot more like a 16mp version of the 694 and has about 12 bits DR - at high gain it has a read noise of about 1e, but the DR is only about 9-10 bits in a single sub. But it doesn't matter much what an individual sub looks like - stacking a few hundred of them can yield a result that is entirely different from a single sub, since each sub contains only a very small fraction of the eventual signal. At high gain you can take a whole lot of very short subs.
there is nothing magic about the 1600 and the other low read noise cameras that you list will be able to take short subs. It is interesting that there suddenly seems to be a realisation by camera makers that low read noise is important.
edit: clearly 12 bits would not be enough for the two cameras that you listed in your post #17, but as was pointed out in the first post of this thread, "CCD or CMOS chips with greater than 12 bit dynamic range will need more than 12 bit conversion, but there is no penalty in the 12 bit conversion of the current ASI1600."