Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

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Mr.Horsehead
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Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:48 am

Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

#1

Post by Mr.Horsehead »

Hi Robin,

I´m a beginner in astrophotography using SharpCap 3.2 (64bit). My camera is the above-mentioned QHY 5iii 485 c.
Actually I´m trying to get a good result of M51, doing short exposures. Although there´s some progress, I´m still struggling with many problems.

One of them is the banding. I tried different traffic rates but it doesn´t disappear completely. Using the banding suppression made it even worse. So the question is, if another SharpCap version (3.0 or 3.1 / 32 or 64 bit) would match better with my camera. I´m using the camera´s driver, not ASCOM.
My notebook has got Windows 10, 64 bit. Thank you for some information. I really like SharpCap and hope my problems can be solved.

Regards Johannes
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Re: Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

if you are seeing horizontal banding in the images then it's unlikely that different versions of the software will help - the banding suppression function has not changed significantly since its first introduction and I don't think the QHY SDK version is likely to have much impact either.

My experience of banding has been to look at different gains (sometimes the banding is low at one gain and high at another). Also consider if there could be noise on the 5V USB power supply to the camera - I've seen cases where the noise is much reduced when the laptop is on battery power - presumably because the 5V line is more stable.

cheers,

Robin
Mr.Horsehead
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:48 am

Re: Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

#3

Post by Mr.Horsehead »

Hi Robin,

thank you for the information. I will try it again with different gain values and I will vary the traffic with a step size of 5, hoping that this is exact enough then.
Also I will run the notebook on battery power. If this helps, I gonna buy me a powerbank if this doesn´t cause new trouble to the USB port.

Regards Johannes
johnpd
Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2018 8:30 am

Re: Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

#4

Post by johnpd »

Johannes,

Be aware there is an issue with the QHY5III-485C. I got mine about a month ago. I have not tried deep sky objects yet. Basically just started with the Moon as I will be participating in a livestream of the lunar eclipse in May.

You will notice a distinct Green tint to the images out of the box. I also have the QHY5III-462 which has the same Green tint. I was able to determine the best settings in SharpCap for Red, Green, and Blue to get a good white balance for it in the RGB colour space. I used the same numbers for the QHY5II-485C and they came out pretty good. I started playing around with the "raw" colour spaces. The 8-bit raw came out pretty good with those numbers as well but when I tried 16-bit raw, it was a mess. I tried each of the Bayer patterns and could not come up with a good result. QHY had not posted anywhere that I could find the correct Bayer pattern for the QHY5III-485C. The closest one that almost worked was "GBRG". I contacted QHY and they are aware of a problem in using the 16-bit colour space. If you stick to RGB you should be OK. By the way, if you use Red=158, Green=128, and Blue=224, you should get pretty good results. You can always adjust the color if need be in whatever processing software you use.

Good luck,
JohnD
Mr.Horsehead
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Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:48 am

Re: Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

#5

Post by Mr.Horsehead »

Hello John,

thank you for the information. I will take your color settings for Red, Green und Blue.
Concerning the 16bit raw, it doesn´t sound good. My experience is the same so far that the images are very green.
But do I get you right that you still can remove the green tint in the later processing - even for the 16bit raw?
Have you successfully made some deep sky images with the 462 which has the same "green" problem?

Regards Johannes
johnpd
Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2018 8:30 am

Re: Which SharpCap version is the best for QHY 5iii 485 c?

#6

Post by johnpd »

Hi Johannes,

QHY just sent me a new driver. I will have to play with it to see if they fixed everything without breaking anything else. So 16-bit Raw reliability is still to be determined. If you use the white balance settings I mentioned with the RGB24 colour space, you should get pretty close to proper colors with no green tint. I just tried a little deep sky with the 462 and there were some issues with it. Because of its much smaller FOV I have not pursued it. I hopefully will be trying some with the 485 in the next few weeks. The Moon is an issue right now. I will be participating in a livestream broadcast of the Lunar eclipse on May 26th using the 485.

JohnD
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