Player One Apollo M Mini: stange black lines

[GTI77]

Hi, at certain gain settings black horizontal lines at the bottom come out. Updated drivers and latest version of sharpcap 4.0 downloaded. Help me thanks.

[Menno555]

Hi and welcome

Could you provide us with a bit more info? Like specific settings.
A screenshot of the SharpCap settings and an image with the black lines in it would be helpful

Menno

[GTI77]

Thanks for the welcome. Here are the pictures. I pulled the curves to highlight the problem.

[admin]

Hi,

I can see the funny diagonal lines in the first image, but nothing special in the other two.

In that first image, is it a single frame or the result of stacking? Can you send a saved image that shows that (also please include the capture settings file that is saved with it, so we can see the settings used).

thanks,

Robin

[GTI77]

The first image is the result of stacking. Sum of 100 images of 8 seconds each. As I said I pulled the curves a lot to highlight the black lines at the bottom.

[GTI77]

I get it. For exposures up to 999 milliseconds everything is fine. For exposures longer than 1 second, black lines come out

[Menno555]

I don't know the camera, so did some searching.
I did see that it goes to High Conversion Gain when the gain is higher than 145. Maybe check if the banding is there when under or above 145?

Also, the camera is specifically designed for solar imaging. So I can imagine that it is designed for higher framerates. I don't know if it has anything do do with this banding but I thought I mention it

Menno

[GTI77]

Even if I set the gain to maximum the bands do not appear. They come only if I exceed a second of exposure

[admin]

Hi,

the Apollo M seems to be an IMX174 based camera - I have the ZWO and QHY equivalents and they will happily take long exposures.

One thing you can try - put the camera into still mode by unselecting the 'Live View' option at the left hand side of the toolbar (just under the file menu). In that mode, the camera only takes images on request, and maybe using the still image functionality of the camera will work around the issue - try using the 'Snapshot' button in still mode with a longer exposure (say 5s) and see if that fixes the problem.

If you still have problems, please share a single frame (captured with the snapshot button) that shows the issue, along with the camera settings file. I will then have a chat with P1 and see if they have any suggestions.

thanks,

Robin

[GTI77]

I tried at home with a photographic lens in snapshot mode, exposure for about 5 seconds and you can see the black lines. I attach the images. Thank you.