ASI2600MC To take Darks / Dark Flats or Not

[nexusjeep]

Brian,
But surely the whole purpose of the brain in smart histogram is to make this decision in an informed manner using the readings it is seeing on that night at that point in time for the elevation I am planning to image.

I do not see how one or two readings can be an adequate suits all situations as the actual noise level of the sky is going to be influenced by moisture content / dust content / high cloud / time of year as lights around us start to go off on shops and industrial units around 21.00 so depending on the time of year this will have an effect on the average background noise without mentioning the moon and it's rise / set time as well as age and position.

With these things affecting the average background noise level then I would think it makes more sense to use the brain for each outing as this will theoretically maximise the usable data for the amount of time I have available.

The only time I deliberately would go over in the exposure would be if it proposes an incredibly short period as this would be a pain in the butt in terms of quantity of images to stack don't really like going over 400 lights for a session.

The other thing that I forgot in the list of effects above is whether I am running with just a flattener or with the 0.75x reducer flattener as this will increase the number of photons hitting each pixel so again alter the values and as you mentioned it will also depend on the type of target in shot.

I have no issue with running the brain on every imaging session target to get a reading as I always have to shoot flats and bias are not an issue as they are fast and if what I am seeing in the processing is true then these will be sufficient without the need for darks / dark flats and if the brain moves the black level or brightness or other image settings then you I would not be able to use any of my library of darks as they will not calibrate correctly I know this from experience as I had a terrible colour balance issue on an image I was trying to process as I had used a master dark in APP that I assumed correct but had not noticed that the black level had changed in SharpCap.

Cheers
Nick

[oopfan]

Nick,

I'm just telling you what pros do. If you want to go down the path you are on, don't let me stop you. You are just making more work for yourself.

Brian

[nexusjeep]

Things move on though so what may have been the norm previously develops as technology software and other things increase, the CCD / CMOS long exposure debate being one of those things. As I have the tool available to carry out a measurement and suggestions from the brain on a condition by condition basis then I see no reason not to leverage the power of this.

Cheers
Nick

[oopfan]

Take a look at this:
https://rumble.com/vcqant-brians-late-n ... d-flu.html

300s and 600s stacks from data I purchased. Notice that the exposures aren't 264 seconds and 553 seconds.

[nexusjeep]

But does that mean that you should not do them I think not, you are obviously going to keep taking the counter point so to keep everything civil and not make this thread a he said / she said debate I think I will call time on the discussion.

Cheers
Nick