First Light SPC900

John K · #1 07-06-2006, 10:13 PM

Well my new Philips SPC900 arrived yesterday evening so I rushed home tonight and took my first images without any colour enhancement mods etc. just straight out of the box.

The moon images are approx. 100 frames simply prorcessed in Registax. No multi point aligning etc, I just aligned and stacked based on the centre of the best frame as taken with my 12.5" and 5 x Powermate. Seeing was around 6/10.

By the time I got to Jupiter seeing dropped to around 3-4/10! so the attached images are quite poor but I had to see how the camera would perform. Jupiter images are 300 frames were a quick stack and processing job in Registax. 20% Gamma, 50% Gain. The exposure slider on the software that comes with the camera does not tell me what the exposure is numerically (e.g. 1/20 etc). Any thoughts here?

So, do I think on initial inspection wether this camera is better than my old NexImage? Well based especially on the moon, my gut feel that it will possibly be around 30% better. On Jupiter it appears to definetely have less noise but need to play more with the settings and depending on the seeing.

John.

Lester · #2 07-06-2006, 10:31 PM

Hi John,

Great for first atempt, loads of detail.

h0ughy (David) · #3 07-06-2006, 11:27 PM

nice first attempt! If you can call it that, thats awesome, look forward to future results

iceman (Mike) · #4 08-06-2006, 06:23 AM

They're excellent, John! The copernicus and Jupiter shots are great.

The 900nc drivers don't show the settings you're using, which is really annoying I agree. Not a huge deal to me, but it can be frustrating. You could try using "wcctrl", which will show you the settings.

I took the liberty of taking your 2nd Jupiter shot into AstraImage, doing a split colour planes, LR 2 @ 1.1, increase saturation and reduce gamma. Hope you don't mind. It's a great shot. Well done.

Dennis · #5 08-06-2006, 08:22 AM

Wow - great images, looks like the SPC900 is a winner.

Cheers

Dennis

Striker (Tony) · #6 08-06-2006, 08:55 AM

Great stuff John.

I look forward to more images with your new cam.

John K · #7 08-06-2006, 09:17 AM

Thanks for the comments guys.

Thanks for the extra processing Mike, I was so excited about the new camera I just wanted to get some "quick and dirty" processing to see the results. I 'll play around more with my AVI's over the next few days.

p.s. In terms of multi point aligning for lunar shots, do I understand that you align at different points on the AVI using registax and then combine a number of images together?

ving (David) · #8 08-06-2006, 12:33 PM

hey, what moon shadow is that transiting the top of the planet?

nice image btw

Robert_T · #9 08-06-2006, 04:36 PM

John, these are truly magnificent shots and worthy of a long period of trial and effort and great seeing... out of the box and 4/10.... you've gotta be kiddin'

With the sliders not showing exposure, it annoyed me with the 900nc when I first changed over from the nexiamge, but now I just don't care and assume if it's hard to left it's the same as the frame speed with typical increments up from that as you move to right...e.g. if 10fps and two clicks to the right I've been assuming 1/33rd of a sec.... rough eh!

Great stuff!

davidpretorius · #10 08-06-2006, 09:27 PM

the boys overseas have reconfigured wcctrl as mike said, so it should talk fine to the 900nc. i have only just started using it to control exposure and settings . It saves your settings for loading up later

you have made a move in the right direction John, these are great images

RB (Andrew) · #11 09-06-2006, 09:54 AM

Very nice images John, great start.

Looking forward to more.