Watec 120N+ video camera

[allan gould]

Had a go at the Tarantula nebula with the Watec 120N+ video camera. Seems to be getting somewhat easier to use despite the plagues of mosquitoes here in Brisbane. Sprayed all of myself with Rid - except for 1 place. My butt looks like that of the Elephant Man after loosing at least 2 litres of blood. Anyway the shot is a stacked image of 50x10 sec shots with darks removed in Deepskystacker and levels done in PS. For such short integrations I'm pleased as to how deep I can go. Ive got to get to a dark site and see what 1 min integrations can do.
Allan

[bloodhound31]

Its good to see people pushing their gear.

Keep up the good work.

Baz

[leon]

For a video shot that is not a bad effort, but I have to ask why you were imaging with no clothes on.

Bloody mosies

leon

[h0ughy (David)]

your pushing the gear Al - thats great. My question is where did you get clear weather?

[allan gould]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

your pushing the gear Al - thats great. My question is where did you get clear weather?

Well the truth is I had to do a
(1) naked "sod off rain and cloud dance",
(2)sacrifice two virgins and
(3)give up smoking.
The first bit attracted the second but the third was covered by the new year's resolution.

[EzyStyles (Eric)]

i quite like this shot there Al esp from a video camera! question, did you use some sort of noise reduction in photoshop? just that youve blend alot of finer details in the image.

[allan gould]

Originally Posted by EzyStyles

i quite like this shot there Al esp from a video camera! question, did you use some sort of noise reduction in photoshop? just that youve blend alot of finer details in the image.

No its exactly as it came from the video camera. All I did was to capture 50 frames of 10 sec with virtual dub, then 50x10 sec dark. Put them through Deepskystacker and adjust levels with PS. I really want to do 1 min integrations with this camera which is rated at 0.00002lux at f1.4. The masterdark is quite noise free (see attached) but a 1 min integration is blown out of the water by the light pollution from Brisbane and a full moon at the same time as the frames were captured. Brisbane was right in the same direction of the nebula when captured - so I was limited to 10 sec shots. If I manage to get to Leyburn then I will try several minutes integration just to see how far I can push the whole thing, while autoguiding.

[EzyStyles (Eric)]

there are hardly any noise from that dark frame. thanks for the info Al. I remember that goes also with my DSI. A 2 minute expo will totally blown out the image but is there some sort of histogram which you can adjust in virtual dub during capturing? i know with the DSI that lowering the histogram with its capturing software will de-bloat the image with the same expo while also capturing more photons.

[allan gould]

I don't think so Eric, but then I'm no afficienado with virtualdub. I've found it to be a good piece of software that you can set the capture rate so that the camera feedout is automatically captured as a single frame up to 60 seconds after that its manually capturing. Ill check and see about the histogram but there is another flavour of virtualdub that may have that feature