SharpCap Forums

Any ETA on when Sharpcap Pro will be able to control PhD2 Dithering in general image capture (not live stacking)?

Really important feature that is noticeably missing.

Thank you.

If you select "save individual frames" and change the view drop box to display last frame and not stacked then the live stacking works the same as normal capture mode...........but with dithering.

I usually watch the stack for a while but change to individual frames when I want to check to see if my focus needs adjusting.

Very clever!

Cheers, Robin

Yes, clever, but still not "frame oriented": as has been raised before on these forums, if you're running longer exposures, it's frustrating to have to wait one or two subframes to hope that the dither has finished, and then be able to get another usable frame, plus annoying to have to have to manually sort out those subs ruined by the dither hitting them...

Frame oriented shooting with PHD dithering would be much appreciated


Carl

+1

Hi Robin,

I'd just like to add my support for this request. It's frustrating to lose a whole light frame (often 2+ minutes of exposure time) when the dithering process only takes a few seconds. This becomes very costly (25% lost frames) if I want to dither every fourth frame over a 3-4 hour period.

I'd love to hear of a planned date to have a new release available that corrects this issue, and of any brilliant work-arounds for the time being.

Thanks,

Mark

I would also strongly appreciate a dithering control working with PHD for "normal" single frame capturing. I really like SharpCap very much, it is very versatile, powerful yet easy to use - just what one needs when imaging in the dark and cold where time counts, I do not want to waste time by fiddling with cascaded menues. Smart histogramme is very useful.

But the missing dithering feature really males me think changing to another software which offers just that. So I would be more than happy if this feature would be introduced. Then Sharp Cap would have everything one needs.

Hope this will come soon.

Best,

Klaus

Hi,

Please note that in the latest versions of SharpCap there is an additional option for the live stack dithering that allows the exposure to be dropped to 1 second during the dithering procedure and then reset when the dithering finishes. This means that long frames no longer need to be wasted every time a dither occurs. As pointed out above the live stacking functionality can be used to capture unprocessed frames for later stacking in other software, giving a workaround for the fact that the dithering functionality is not yet included when live stacking is not active.

Cheers, Robin

I use the live stack with save individual frames and last imaging session used it with the new dither function and can't fault it as it lost 12 to 15s per dither which would be the case for any imaging package whilst the dither is underway and then instantly changes back to the correct exposure once finished.

As chongo228 says above I like the live stack feature as well when saving the individual frames as you can see the image improve in depth and detail, I also use the FWHM values for each frame to access when I need to consider a focus change. Generally the temperature is dropping so I just click in a few steps on the Sesto focus motor and then wait to see what the next frame shows. Doing this I can usually hold a reasonably constant FWHM value between the frames for the whole duration of the filter cycle.

Cheers
Nick

I used PHD2 guiding with dithering for the first time and it worked per my settings. That is, I was doing 3 min exposures and then dithering every fourth frame. So, every 4th frame was not stacked as expected. I have two questions:

1- Do I need to change a setting to not have the entire 3 min exposure lost or is that how it works right now? I am a little confused by, "an additional option for the live stack dithering that allows the exposure to be dropped to 1 second during the dithering procedure and then reset when the dithering finishes" .

2- I am using the default setting of 20 steps. Is that normally what is used?

Regards,
Bruce

Hi Bruce,
With PHD2 connected in Sharpcap you should have an extra tick box yellow arrow on the image below that says reduce exposure . The pixel allowance will depend on the pixel ratio between the guide camera and the imaging camera on my setup I find 8 to 10 works fine 20 gives me very large black borders.

just altered the image as it was an old installation on my PC this tick box is only present in the 20th and 30th September versions.

Cheers
Nick