ASI533MC Pro lack of color depth

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mho
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:12 pm

ASI533MC Pro lack of color depth

#1

Post by mho »

Hello Everyone,

I have a very strange problem happening with my ZWO ASI533MC Pro on one of my Windows PCs.
First let me say this is only on one PC and works fine on my other Windows machines.
Also the ZWO ASI183MC works fine so this is specific to the ASI533MC.
Have the latest SharpCap 4 and ZWO dirvers installed.
When I use the native ZWO driver with this camera on one specific PC the color depth is very low.
Switch to the ASCOM driver and it works fine. However the ASCOM driver does not allow me to set the exposure short enough for the Moon.

See the attached screen shots of both drivers being used.
Also if I take snapshot or do a .ser video I get no errors but the resulting file is all black.

Thanks,
William
Attachments
ZWO ASCOM driver
ZWO ASCOM driver
ASI533MC ASCOM.JPG (102.82 KiB) Viewed 6741 times
ZWO Native driver
ZWO Native driver
ASI533MC NATIVE.JPG (109.14 KiB) Viewed 6741 times
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admin
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Re: ASI533MC Pro lack of color depth

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

looking at the settings, the exposure time is much shorter in the case where you are using the native driver. This, along with the save files being almost entirely black makes me think that you have at some point used the display stretch function in SharpCap (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#!2!Min ... %20Stretch), then left the stretch active and forgotten about it. That is misleading you into thinking you have set the exposure correctly, when you have actually set ended up very underexposed with a big stretch applied that makes the image on screen look about right.

You can either reset the stretch manually, or open the camera with the <CTRL> key pressed to reset all camera settings. If you don't like the fact that SharpCap restores the camera settings from last time then you can turn this off in the settings if you want.

Hope this helps,

Robin
mho
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:12 pm

Re: ASI533MC Pro lack of color depth

#3

Post by mho »

Yes, that was it. I opened the camera using the Control key and it reset and works great.

Thanks very much. I was going crazy.

William
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