How Do I Test My Camera?

[KTAZ]

Sound like a silly question, but;

I bought a new ZWO ASI071MC Pro. I ran a Sensor Analysis and didn't get any type of errors. In all honesty, I wouldn't know one if I saw one as I really don't understand everything behind the output. I simply do this to have a profile in NINA when I want to do an exposure calculation.

Two things are driving this question;

1) When I connect the 071 to Sharpcap in my office in full daylight, a 50ms exposure loop shows a black screen. I have to bump it to 1000ms to get a dim frame at gain 90. On the other hand, if I connect my ASI 290MM guide camera, it is a full white screen at 50ms.

2) When I finally had a chance to capture some frames, I stacked 300 30" frames and got an image so weak that I could barely stretch it without blowing it out. Unfortunately, I flushed those frames after getting frustrated.

This is a sample frame taken with the camera; can somebody tell me if it looks "normal"?

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqgzO3BXHsZNhJRGyyE ... w?e=KkW2hr

I need to understand if SC can help me analyze this camera.

[admin]

Hi,

the image that you shared looks pretty typical for a star field image taken with that camera. Unfortunately that image was captured using NINA, so it doesn't give us any hints to the settings you were using in SharpCap, which might have helped explain why the images you are getting are dim.

I have an 071MC here, and get reasonable images in indoor conditions at 50ms, minimum gain, certainly not black. It's worth checking the other settings being used for the camera to see if one of them is affecting the brightness. The easiest thing to do is to hold down the CTRL key while opening the camera - that makes sure all the camera settings should go back to defaults.

cheers,

Robin