First toucam pic (Copernicus area)

[Garyh]

Hi all,
Well I`m more of a deepsky imager myself but having this toucam and the mars opposition getting close how can blame me for giving it a go!!
This is my very first toucam shot and is of the great copernicus crater and surrounds with my 6" newt and a 2x barlow..
Seeing was average with lots of clouds with gaps. Was hoping to have a go at mars but that side of the sky was completely clouded over so had some fun on the moon
Image is 80 frames out of 800 and the usual wavelets applied etc.
Had some good seeing on the first few attempts but didn`t realize that the Vlounge software just kept overwriting the avi ! so was lost. I know better now.
Anyways comments to my processing etc are most welcome as I am very new at this webcam thingy!
Thanks for looking guys..

[iceman (Mike)]

That's a great start Gary, especially for the conditions you describe.

1) Get rid of vlounge and start using k3ccdtools version 1 (or later) or virtualdub.
2) Try capturing in B&W - there's not significant colour on the moon at high resolutions and even then you really need to push the saturation.
3) Processing doesn't look too bad. It will always look a bit blown-out/over-processed if you push it too hard when the seeing wasn't up to it.

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Garyh

Hi all,
>snip
Had some good seeing on the first few attempts but didn`t realize that the Vlounge software just kept overwriting the avi ! so was lost. I know better now.
Anyways comments to my processing etc are most welcome as I am very new at this webcam thingy!
Thanks for looking guys..

Yeah – that quirky feature also snared me on my 1st night out!

That's a fine image for your 1st effort Gary – there is a lot to learn about focusing, capturing and processing and you’re off to a flying start.

When using a ToUcam, I found that using too high a Gain tended to make the images quite noisy. I experimented with the Gamma slider to cope with the extremes of black and white on the Moon.

Cheers

Dennis

[Garyh]

Thats Mike for the tips! shall do in B/W next time! and capture in another program..
I might redo this image and stack the very best to see if it makes a difference.
Thanks Dennis for the comment, shall play with that gamma slider next time!
Might give vitualdub a go?

Is there anyway to save the camera settings as its a pain to have to change them everytime?
Thanks for the tips so far!..
cheers

[iceman (Mike)]

With programs like k3ccd it will save the camera settings, or you can use a program called wcctrl which lets you define "presets" that can be loaded for a given object etc.

[maksutover]

Mike are these programs you speak of free? If so could you care to link this lost soul ??

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Gary, I use Vlounge and have never had this 'overwriting' thing you mention.

I don't even know what it is

A trick I found in Vlounge is to have the Gain set on Zero for everything

[Garyh]

Thanks Ken! for the info..I had the gain set about in the middle and the camera was on 1/50 sec at 10fps.
Maksutover ..Virtualdub is free and I have downloaded and installed it already...looks like a handy piece of software once I learn how to use it..
http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/
Had a closer look at my pic yesterday and realized I didn`t apply the wavelets to the whole image just a preview square...lol
cheers Gary