Quote:
Originally Posted by theskyhound
I hope nobody minds my jumping in here, but as the developer of this tool I was just a bit heartbroken by the comment above and felt I should speak up.
Do you ever image during moonlight? Twilight? From a darker site? With different filters? The sub exposure time really does matter and in some cases it matters a lot. You can get away with one standard exposure time you are comfortable with as long as the conditions never change. But the moment you try to observe with a brighter sky background or with a different filter or different telescope then what worked in the past will no longer work nearly so well. The worst part is that you will never know how much better your images would have been with a different sub exposure...
If you play around with the calculator you can experiment with different conditions, telescopes, filters, etc, and find out exactly how these things affect the final result. It boggles my mind that anyone would dismiss something that could be so useful.
While I'm at it I'd like to add that the exposure calculator does a lot more than just compute the optimum sub exposure. It is like a laboratory where you can experiment with different things to see what effect they have on the final image. It is a complete scientific model of your camera, telescope, and sky conditions that allows you to ask, "what if?" questions. For instance, "what if I expose after the moon rises? How much longer will I have to expose to obtain the same SNR?" This takes the guesswork out of the process. Based on what the calculator says you can make an informed decision rather than rely on simple rules of thumb. If I have learned anything from creating this tool is is that simple rules of thumb are pretty much meaningless. There are far too many variables.
Clear skies,
Greg
|
Have you considered making a trial versin available? I wouldn't buy sofware anymore unless I got to try it to make sure it did what I expected it to do.