Paul,
Here's an example of what I'm getting from the starlight camera at F8. First is a single 5minute luminence sub straight from the camera and second is after a random stretch of the same single sub using ddp in maxim. I've been using ddp on combined images lately with pleasing results however it doesn't seem to work very well on qhy8 images I've stacked in dss. I think dss messes with the black point.
For flats, I use a light box and adjust exposure time to get at least a 30% max level on the hystogram. ie: check the screen stretch box in maxim and set it to range, the top of the bell should be between 20,000 ans 30,000. 65,000 is fully saturated. I've added a single flat image. You can't see the moltes in it without stretching it, but they are there. I've added a screen shot of that flat in maxim with screen stretch set to range. I've since cleaned the ccd front window
To calibrate in maxim 5, you need to go to process and select set calibration. I normally clear out the files that are there and add the cal files for the run being processed. I can normally dump all the cal files in the one directory and so long as I've set maxim correctly when taking them, it automagically sorts all the files in that directory into the correct groups. I've found maxim takes significantly longer to check quality and align the images than it does to stack or colour combine them.