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Chris,
i"ll keep it simple
since you're just testing the qhy8, i'll suggest the following
use ezcap in win7, big plus is you dont need to debayer, you can see the colour image straight away, and the even save it as bmp to test stack in dss.
what I do is get my alignment, guiding sorted out, then save each exposure as bmp and fits. the bmp is 24 bit colour so no debayer necessary, then i play around with gimp with just one frame to see how much detail has been captured, and then if there is potential, i use the fits and dss.
you'll see the big advantage with the cooled ccd when you realize there is almost no noise, you dont need to bother with darks or dithering and you can stretch the image a lot more than the dslr since its 16 bit.
the live preview is a real neat feature like live view. just set the exposure to 400ms or so.
use a dew strap around the nosepiece and the mpcc spacer and the glass wont fog up
just tackle one issue at a time systematically. it does need some patience but is well worth it.
get the gain and offset value with the bias frame. I use 2 and 125.
I've just started with the camera as well and with mine being F4, its a lot more &%%$^#,.
the more i use it, the more i like this camera.
all my software issues were fixed by moving to win7.
good luck.
edit, in ezcap, remember to hit the auto button below the histogram and use x8 or x16 oversampling.
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