|
Post by howie1 on Oct 30, 2016 11:29:40 GMT
Breaking the rules already (LOL) ... started out with my usual single 30 sec frames but due to the very high windy conditions was forced to start shooting most of the frames at 15 sec single frames. Its a 45 min video but well worth watching on your smart wide screen TV, or pc hooked up with hdmi cable then navigating to the YouTube video and watching in HD setting and full screen mode. Great images for 15 secs. Hence posting in the Live forum.
First the link with "aaa" added before the URL so you can cut and paste the link (minus the "aaa") to manually navigate to the video. aaahttps://youtu.be/85CYhrOU6WU
And now the embedded video link in this post in case you just want to watch it now and not on a large widescreen HD tv.
|
|
|
Post by Dragon Man on Oct 30, 2016 12:25:06 GMT
Fantastic Video Howie! and no rules broken. You are within the 'Live' times. I am amazed at the quality at 15 seconds. That's what I am after. Almost Live high resolution observing One thing I notice though is that even though you have clicked on 'Refresh', the images never seem to refresh, just stay as the one single frame. I would have expected a new frame to load up every 15 seconds or so.
I would love to see the live results on very faint objects like Abell Clusters at short exposures. I reckon that would win me over
|
|
|
Post by howie1 on Oct 30, 2016 14:28:56 GMT
Thanks Ken. Refresh tells it ... "if you see any new images rock up in the folder being monitored, then send them to the viewer window". I was just shooting single frames by clicking the EOS Utility shutter button manually. So as soon as the shutter closed on that one single shot, AT 'saw' it and put it up in the viewer window. Now ... if I had the EOS Utilities intervalometer running ... than you'd see the shot changing in the viewer window as AT 'saw' each new frame delivered by the intervalometer and it would stack them and thus every N secs the viewer window has a nicer/less noisy image. BTW, as davy recently found out ... time to stack is proportional to the square of the size of the pixel count ... LOL! Big RAW files take long times to process in stacking. Smaller jpegs take much less time. I dont post process, just observe at night in the field so jpegs are fine for me. Great quality for short stacking if I need to. And yeah ... I used to run the ASI224 in an Orion ST80 piggybacked to the Newt which had the DSLR ... because faint stuff is definitely hard with a DSLR. I posted that on davy's monster piggyback thread! His goals seemed very similar to what mine were. I just got tired lugging extra stuff around and SharpCap (to run the ASI224) always crashed on the MacBook so I just use the DSLR and newt by itself now. But, I find it tough to get very faint stuff. Improving every time I go out, but haven't quite found the 'recipe' yet! LOL. A while back I used my unmodded 700d with Baader moon and skyglow filter at my unit complex of 140 townhouses 20 km from downtown Brisbane to shoot this image (link below). There was a light reflection off a nearby street light bouncing off the unbaffled 200p newt. More chuckles. There's quite a few faint fuzzies in the shot (hover over the image cos astrometry did its stuff and identified them all) but its not really great quality and was 10x60s at iso3200! flic.kr/p/HeHyNHBut yeah ... need to practice and try out a few things on faint stuff and short exposures and do a vid on stacking or whatever I find. I know one great tip I found out by playing with the AT files the next day was if you get the best image you can with AT color adjustments then save the image, even if orig it was jpegs it saves as tif. So then drag and drop that saved tif file back into AT filelist and do another color adjustment you can often get better shot. Is that post processing?!?! LOL
|
|
|
Post by Dragon Man on Oct 30, 2016 15:39:17 GMT
Thanks Ken. Refresh tells it ... "if you see any new images rock up in the folder being monitored, then send them to the viewer window". I was just shooting single frames by clicking the EOS Utility shutter button manually. So as soon as the shutter closed on that one single shot, AT 'saw' it and put it up in the viewer window. Now ... if I had the EOS Utilities intervalometer running ... than you'd see the shot changing in the viewer window as AT 'saw' each new frame delivered by the intervalometer and it would stack them and thus every N secs the viewer window has a nicer/less noisy image. Ahhhh, bummer. So there is no way to simply have refreshing images appear 'without' stacking? If that's the case I'm not interested Back when I did DSLR Astrophotography the Capture program I used was ImagesPlus ($239.95 plus freight of disc ) and it refreshes the image constantly. It doesn't even stack because it is only an 'Imaging' program, but it was good for public outreach by refreshing each exposure. In that sense it displayed similar to an Analogue camera. Single frame after single frame after single frame ad nauseum LOL!!! Just like 'Live'. It would automatically save each frame for later stacking, but if you clicked on "Focus' it didn't save them, but it still kept refreshing
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 30, 2016 15:50:39 GMT
Would it be worthwhile contacting astrotoaster and see if it's viable in an update..
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 30, 2016 18:07:31 GMT
Sitting out the back garden,all set up,picnic table,laptop,allview and camera all ready to start, camera set. Camera settings Bulb mode F5.6.. 300mm canon lens ISO 400 Mirror off Quality s fine 10 second exposure. Time 18.06 Weather holding out But cloudy, very cloudy
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 30, 2016 18:20:29 GMT
Think this going to be a waste of time fired off a few ten second ISO 800 shots and nothing,,can't see one star to do a test on,,some you win some you lose
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 30, 2016 19:27:28 GMT
Total washout for testing tonight The image quality keeps changing, I set it ,and confirm,take a shot and it changes,,need to look into this more.
|
|
|
Post by howie1 on Oct 31, 2016 1:40:50 GMT
Err, hang on Ken ... thats not true ... you do not have to stack to have pictures refresh constantly.
AT constantly monitors a folder for ANY new images appearing in it.
If you have the SINGLE button pressed, it throws up every single new image appearing in that folder into the viewer. I was only pressing the shutter button once. If you had an intervalometer/ImagesPlus set up to just shoot continuously an infinite number of shots every 10 seconds, then on SINGLE mode in AT, every 10 seconds a new image would appear in the viewer window. It would also NOT be stacked ... just single shots as they appeared in the olfder as they were taken by the intervalometer.
However, if you have the STACK button pressed, then every single new frame your intervalometer chucks into the folder being monitored is sent off to DSS 'Engine' to stack. AND, after every single frame the new "stacked-thus-far-image" is put into the viewer. So as soon as the first frame is taken, you can start expanding and adjusting colours etc. As each frame goes into the stack you will see the viewer image get less noisy. The color adjustments all are live on the fly so if you see less noise at frame 2 and you think you can tease out more detail then move the sliders. Ditto when the next frame comes in ... tease out more details with the color adjustments. And so on.
|
|
|
Post by howie1 on Oct 31, 2016 2:08:27 GMT
davy ... Sorry, gotta say this ... hope you take it the right way .... Wow! Talk about trying to make things as hard as they can possibly be! Cloudy conditions! .... AltAz mount instead of GEM! ... 300mm camera lens! (REALLY hard to focus at night as they go from in-focus to out-of-focus on a star with just a finger touch on the focus ring!) ... f/5.6 ... and lastly setting ISO400 when trying to find stuff! Whew!! And BTW that screen shot shows you are still RAW Large format! Also, were you using the modded Canon you just bought? Let me know cos I will throw together a checklist mate ... love to help you out. Havent you got your HEQ5 setup looking through a window? IE all ready to go?
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 31, 2016 3:45:17 GMT
Hi Howie,i don't do easy,the camera won't hold quality at small, it jumps to raw l or l fine every time I take a shot,dont know why,,need to try the camera without byeos and see if it still does it,the other night using the scope was a disaster,star trails,and a bit of focus issue,, weather wise I'm pushing it to be honest,im slewing scope to clear patches in the sky ,lot of moisture content in the sky threatening to rain,the big scope is set up at the flat,fov is very small through the window,side of next building is in field of view on left window giving about 12" wide by 14" high tripod on lowest hight and no pier,right hand window can't be used massive LP from a builders yards security flood lights,its like a foot ball stadium. Im going to swap the allview with the eq3 mount it's just as portable, I even ran my last 8" newt on it, extra weight for balance on low height tripod in high fence garden it works 😃. Hopefully weather will improve.
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 31, 2016 3:52:30 GMT
Going to install canon utilities to laptop as well so I can work closer to your set up,im not impatient last year I only had about five nights out with the scope,this year was a buying year,bought bigger and better kit and learn how to use it, next year,new observatory will get built and I start getting more nights on the big kit. I'm in no Rush,this is my retirement plan hobby ,I'm 15+ years ahead of schedule,, forward planning😉.
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 31, 2016 4:12:03 GMT
Been totally pushing things with my set up,i was hoping for too much,my plan was to try and do outreach in a sense with the new astronomy club I started,, modded camera to see more in the red spectrum for nebula and the alt az mount for quickness, the alt az may work for outreach with the video mode on the 600d in canon utilities,but for what I've been trying to achieve with astrotoaster may just be a step too far,, don't know till you try. Changing to the eq3 pro will sort out the right ascension/ star trails and taking two cameras out with me to test will give me more options.
|
|
|
Post by howie1 on Oct 31, 2016 13:15:09 GMT
I've read all the outreach and club stuff you have started davy ... onya mate! Kudo's to you.
Modded cameras ... they produce crazy weird coloured red/brown/purple images. EVERYTHING is red/brown/purple! They have no IR filter in them anymore!
If you leave them that way, then you will have to move many sliders and settings in the software to get rid of the red and bring the image back to black background, red, white and blue stars with appropriate color in the nebs. Especially if it is a full spectrum modded camera. That is a lot of extra work! Lets repeat that ... that is a lot of extra work. Especially if standing there doing outreach! People get bored real quick.
ALL that you are doing in moving those sliders is white balancing! So .... with a modded camera you need to set a custom white balance and have that set when you take shots. Re-read the AT intro and settings thread as in there I explained to ChrisV how to set a custom WB.
Once you've done that, when you shoot it automatically applies the custom WB thus saving you having to fiddle with all the settings trying to get the colors to "look right"!
|
|
|
Post by howie1 on Oct 31, 2016 13:24:21 GMT
... the camera won't hold quality at small, it jumps to raw l or l fine every time I take a shot .... Hopefully weather will improve.... Weird it jumps to RAW? Googling tells me that BYEOS has two settings ... RAW or RAW+JPEG. Set RAW+JPEG but its a bit of a waste of diskspace! Hopefully some other BYEOS user will chime in ... or maybe do some more searches davy. But for now I think EOS Utils is the way to go. Very simple and easy to use ... just look at the video i posted and pause when you see the window. Easy. LOL does the weather ever get good in Bonnie Scotland?
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 31, 2016 17:24:39 GMT
I've read all the outreach and club stuff you have started davy ... onya mate! Kudo's to you. Modded cameras ... they produce crazy weird coloured red/brown/purple images. EVERYTHING is red/brown/purple! They have no IR filter in them anymore! If you leave them that way, then you will have to move many sliders and settings in the software to get rid of the red and bring the image back to black background, red, white and blue stars with appropriate color in the nebs. Especially if it is a full spectrum modded camera. That is a lot of extra work! Lets repeat that ... that is a lot of extra work. Especially if standing there doing outreach! People get bored real quick. ALL that you are doing in moving those sliders is white balancing! So .... with a modded camera you need to set a custom white balance and have that set when you take shots. Re-read the AT intro and settings thread as in there I explained to ChrisV how to set a custom WB. Once you've done that, when you shoot it automatically applies the custom WB thus saving you having to fiddle with all the settings trying to get the colors to "look right"! Try my best to keep busy lol,, the modded camera is my wee treat to myself,,for eventually getting out with the club I would use the unmodified cannon 600d, would not be fair using a modified camera to show folk what can be achieved with a normal dslr,
|
|
|
Post by davy on Oct 31, 2016 17:30:57 GMT
... the camera won't hold quality at small, it jumps to raw l or l fine every time I take a shot .... Hopefully weather will improve.... Weird it jumps to RAW? Googling tells me that BYEOS has two settings ... RAW or RAW+JPEG. Set RAW+JPEG but its a bit of a waste of diskspace! Hopefully some other BYEOS user will chime in ... or maybe do some more searches davy. But for now I think EOS Utils is the way to go. Very simple and easy to use ... just look at the video i posted and pause when you see the window. Easy. LOL does the weather ever get good in Bonnie Scotland? think we got to weeks of the sun,,I nearly took my Jersey off one day..lol.
|
|
|
Post by howie1 on Nov 1, 2016 1:19:31 GMT
think we got to weeks of the sun,,I nearly took my Jersey off one day..lol. Like Tasmania, our southern most state. Locals down there say it only rains twice a year ... first for 3 months, then for 9!
|
|
|
Post by davy on Nov 3, 2016 14:53:50 GMT
think we got to weeks of the sun,,I nearly took my Jersey off one day..lol. Like Tasmania, our southern most state. Locals down there say it only rains twice a year ... first for 3 months, then for 9!
|
|
|
Post by Dragon Man on Nov 3, 2016 15:00:04 GMT
LOL!!!!
|
|