sensor analysis = battery eater

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schildie
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Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:19 pm

sensor analysis = battery eater

#1

Post by schildie »

Hello everyone,

yesterday I decided to get the sensor of my Nikon Z6 measured.
Everything worked fine until the cam switched off, empty battery. Wasn't expecting that, thought of taking maybe half an hour and some hundred exposures. So I immediately recharged the battery and started again. Additionally switched off EVF and monitor. Hours later and almost 2700 exposures for the second try, the Z6 switched off again, empty battery.

So, what I would suggest is: Please make a hint in preparations section that the camera will take several thousand exposures and the user should connect his camera to a power supply, an absolutely full charged battery isn't enough.
A nice feature would be the option to give a message "please replace the battery" and Sharpcap can continue, using the already taken shots.

I don't know, how much exposures were yet to take, but I won't use this process again until I have an external power supply. Nevertheless, I'm really impressed that the a DSLM is able to take almost 2700 shots :-) Not comfortable because no EVF and monitor useable, but just to be said...

Greetings
Daniel
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Re: sensor analysis = battery eater

#2

Post by admin »

Hi Daniel,

I'm also impressed that the ASCOM driver worked for over 2000 frames!

One thing that should improve the speed of the sensor analysis process is to put the camera into Still Mode (SharpCap 4.0 feature) before starting the analysis. This is recommended for cameras with slow readout or a physical shutter (see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#!2!Sensor%20Analysis). Being in still mode means that SharpCap does not need to take extra frames 'waiting X/5' to ensure that parameter changes have been applied before measuring the brightness.

I could put on the first page of the sensor analysis something along the lines of 'Your camera will need to take many 100s or even 1000s of frames to complete the analysis process' (or similar) - does that make sense?

cheers,

Robin
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