SharpCap Forums

Hi,
Sharpcap seems to be a perfect program - not only for astrophoto, but...
I've found a problem with a cheapest entry level long exposure camera: the ps3 eye.
This gadget works on my win7 comp with CL-Eye Test prog and CL-Eye-Driver-5.3.0.0341 driver - not a very stable one, but still acceptable.
10s frames are quite noisy of course - I hope cooling will help a little.
When i try to use this 'webcam' under sharpcap, I'm not able to obtain any long exposures - I can take eg 1 frame every 5s, but they're only ca 30ms long and do not respond to changes of the exposure time slider position.
Thx,
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qw22

Hi,

Oh, I see, the developers from code labs have gone and tied the exposure for long exposures to the frame rate setting for the camera. I'll use the smiley because I don't seem to have a :doh: one. That's not the right way to implement exposure in a DirectShow driver (they should have implemented IAmCameraControl and IAmVideoProcAmp - that would have let SharpCap show the controls in the UI), but since it looks like the driver is pretty much abandonded now I can't see them updating it.

The workaround is...

* Go back to SharpCap 3.0 or earlier
* If on SharpCap 3.0, go to the settings and choose the 'DirectShow Pipeline' in the DirectShow tab and restart SharpCap
* Start the camera
* From the options menu choose 'Video Capture Pin'
* Select 640x480x0.100 seconds to get 10s exposures (or other options for different exposure lengths)

Note that SharpCap3.1 (and later versions) do not support this approach, but you can have SharpCap 3.0 and 3.1 installed side-by-side on the same machine

cheers,

Robin

It's been a while since I used the ps3 eyecam, but as I remember the last cl eye driver did not work well with Sharpcap beyond 2.9. As you probably know the cl drivers haven't been supported in quite a while.

In order to get the long exposure with the ps3 eye in sharpcap you need to set the exposure bar to maximum and then select Video Capture Pin in the Capture tab.

You'll get a menu of frames per second and you have to choose one that corresponds to the exposure you want, ie: 0.1 FPS for a 10 second exposure.

It's a great little cam, shame about the noise. You can get some great lunar/planetary shots with it, and I even managed to get M13 and M57 with it. Last I checked it also works in PHD2. It can be hard work finding a guide star though.

Beat me to it lol.

Robin,
You ARE great!
btw, there is no sc bug - how about moving to cams/webcams?

cuivenion,
I'm going to try the cooled eye with a 180/2,8 Sonnar for some Ms

Now it's Peltier time...

Ladies and Gentlemen,
THANK YOU!
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