Some days you have all the luck – things work perfectly, then others you don’t!!
On Sunday afternoon I took some time out to get some sunnage. The family knew to leave me alone and I enjoyed the task at hand getting wha ti thought were good image captures using the DMK41 and the Image source capture programme, previously I was using the ZWO 120mm and SharpCap.
I was in the dome – the southerly was howling about me but inside with the top only drawn back it was cosy, and all I did was raise the pier to get some coverage. I took off the 0.5 reducer and put on a 2.4x vixen Barlow and got great focus, except for a big black drop on the left which was in the image train somewhere. So I cleaned the Barlow, cleaned the wedge, but it didn’t shift so I resorted to a ROI which I then used to capture the while sun in 20 x 2 min panels. I though t I had gigabytes worth of data—well maybe not. For the life of me I have no idea why, but my captures were just over 200mb instead of about 1.2gb and I had made 49 of them (expecting 50-60gb) – I had some compression going on, and the way the file was saved? Normally I can read the files straight into autostakker but it wouldn’t touch them, had to do it in Registax6, but even then they were distorted, the ratio was out and made the sun look like a squashed orange?
While I had fun – I just wasted 2 hours of solar imaging through my own stupidity. So stupid I don’t even know what I did wrong?
From the thread title I thought you were talking about the Aust cricket team.
I'm sure you still enjoyed yourself even if the outcome wasn't as planned.
Don't you love it when things go wrong....
Earlier this week I went to my dark sky site (girlfriends family farm), it was a bit of a rush to get everything sorted and the cars loaded up with tent and camping gear but I was confident I had everything I needed, mount - check, scopes - check, camera's - check, lenses - check, Solar power system - check, etc etc etc.
Got down there before sunset and had myself all set up, sky was clear and the Sky Quality Meter gave a reading of 21.7.... everything was perfect, until I went to plug in the timer-remote for the 60Da..... ummmm.... hmmmm bugger.
"It's Ok" I think to myself, I'll use the netbook.... hmmm BackYard EOS trial has ended, ok then, I have AstroPhotography Tool here somewhere.... ummm ok, no I don't.
Nevermind, I'll use Canon's EOS Utility.... ohhhh crap.
Aha! I have AstroArt v5 and it has DSLR control..... yes, yes it does... if you have the plugin... Aaaargh!!
No internet within cooee and a 6 hour 600km round trip to return home to get/install any of the above options just didn't appeal to me so I was limited to 30second exposures in manual mode.... waste of time.
I did manually shoot a 3 hour widefield timelapse (~250 shots) to try to salvage the trip, but at 6400 ISO to get anything useful with 30sec exposures, the noise is not looking great
Day off work , lucky bugger .
Same thing happened to Leon and myself trying a bit of Ha solar viewing up here in the NT sunday arvo , sucker punches .
Did see a Qantas 707 fly over , aye Leon ... , as a storm approached ..
.
Brian.
Brian
Quote:
Originally Posted by h0ughy
On Sunday afternoon I took some time out to get some sunnage. The family knew to leave me alone and I enjoyed the task at hand getting wha ti thought were good image captures using the DMK41 and the Image source capture programme, previously I was using the ZWO 120mm and SharpCap.
I was in the dome – the southerly was howling about me but inside with the top only drawn back it was cosy, and all I did was raise the pier to get some coverage. I took off the 0.5 reducer and put on a 2.4x vixen Barlow and got great focus, except for a big black drop on the left which was in the image train somewhere. So I cleaned the Barlow, cleaned the wedge, but it didn’t shift so I resorted to a ROI which I then used to capture the while sun in 20 x 2 min panels. I though t I had gigabytes worth of data—well maybe not. For the life of me I have no idea why, but my captures were just over 200mb instead of about 1.2gb and I had made 49 of them (expecting 50-60gb) – I had some compression going on, and the way the file was saved? Normally I can read the files straight into autostakker but it wouldn’t touch them, had to do it in Registax6, but even then they were distorted, the ratio was out and made the sun look like a squashed orange?
While I had fun – I just wasted 2 hours of solar imaging through my own stupidity. So stupid I don’t even know what I did wrong?
Ok just to let you know that this can happen to ANYONE David, I captured 12 lovely AVI's today on Sol, only to get the 'Houghy squashed orange' syndrome I just deleted the lot & went & captured a second lot lol..
The problem was my fault, I advised that you check which codec it's using (IC Capture) on startup because sometimes it just does want it wants - Well sure enough it did something out of the ordinary & I was none the wiser until I started loading them into Autostakkert
The problem was it was using Y800, but with 'DV video encoder' which gives ya the squashed orange look..
Ok just to let you know that this can happen to ANYONE David, I captured 12 lovely AVI's today on Sol, only to get the 'Houghy squashed orange' syndrome I just deleted the lot & went & captured a second lot lol..
The problem was my fault, I advised that you check which codec it's using (IC Capture) on startup because sometimes it just does want it wants - Well sure enough it did something out of the ordinary & I was none the wiser until I started loading them into Autostakkert
The problem was it was using Y800, but with 'DV video encoder' which gives ya the squashed orange look..
. normally i leave it on the y800 raw setting as it is a mono camera?
as you can see i was hard at it 
I just deleted the lot & went & captured a second lot lol..
will note that and check
