Noisy Snapshots when using Canon DSLR in SharpCap

[reifheck]

Hi guys,

Newbie to SharpCap here.

I have the following equipment:
Evolution 9.25 with the following hardware:
ALT/AZ Mount on a Wedge
StarSense
Orion SSAG
Orion TOAG
Celestron Focus Motor
Canon EOS 7D
Celestron f/6.3 Reducer
I have the ASCOM DSLR Driver installed and select it in SharpCap.

When taking a snapshot of the stars to help with framing and focus, the background is very noisy (color noise) and makes it hard to pick out stars. I cannot select MONO in the camera settings. I'm using 1 second exposures at ISO 800.

Is the ability to select MONO a function of the ASCOM DSLR driver?

Is there anything else I can do to reduce the noise?

Thank you for your help,
Reif

[admin]

Hi,

as far as I know you cannot select mono in the ASCOM.DSLR driver.

One thing you can try (if you are just looking at the image) is to select 'Reduce Noise (Median Blur,3x3)' from the Display FX dropdown in the toolbar. This should reduce the noise as seen on screen in SharpCap a fair bit, but will not affect the images saved to file.

If you are using one of SharpCap's focus assistance tools, they usually have a 'Noise Reduction' slider or value that you can adjust to try to bring the noise down. In some cases the changes made by the noise reduction are not seen on the image on screen - they only affect the processing of the image to calculate goodness of focus.

Hope this helps,

Robin

[reifheck]

Hi,

as far as I know you cannot select mono in the ASCOM.DSLR driver.

One thing you can try (if you are just looking at the image) is to select 'Reduce Noise (Median Blur,3x3)' from the Display FX dropdown in the toolbar. This should reduce the noise as seen on screen in SharpCap a fair bit, but will not affect the images saved to file.

If you are using one of SharpCap's focus assistance tools, they usually have a 'Noise Reduction' slider or value that you can adjust to try to bring the noise down. In some cases the changes made by the noise reduction are not seen on the image on screen - they only affect the processing of the image to calculate goodness of focus.

Hope this helps,

Robin

Thank you Robin! That is very helpful indeed

Reif