SharpCap Forums

Hi, I'm new to this and I'm stuck. I have celestron 130 with Svbony sv305, I initially played about with the camera during the day and focussed on distant objects etc. able to get nice clear colour images. I've tried the moon at night and it's totally over exposed. Just a white orb. I have lowered everything , the gain is set to zero, auto is unchecked. The exposure is set to its lowest setting 0.3ms... still a bright white orb.
I even tried adding a moon filter, to no avail, still same. Only way to get some details was to partially cover the aperture of my scope with my hand, that then brought some details to the image and I could focus.... I had auto white balance. Max frame rate limit. Rgb24 avi output.
Which of the many settings am I missing here? I have sharpcap 4.1, the latest Svbony drivers, win 11.
Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Hi,

there are a few things to try that might help:

* Turn down the exposure - it sounds like you have already done that though
* Turn down the gain - having a high gain set will act to brighten the image, so turn it down to minimum to prevent this
* Check that you haven't got SharpCap set up to 'stretch' (brighten) the image onscreen - there is a mini histogram on the right hand side - press the 'reset' button on that, which looks like an anticlockwise arrow to reset any stretch that is currently applied - see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#Display%20Stretch

If none of that helps, it's still possible that you may have adjusted a camera control during previous tests and SharpCap will try to restore previous control settings each time you open the camera (this is *normally* helpful). To check this, close the camera, then re-open it, but hold down the <CTRL> key while doing so - this stops SharpCap from re-loading previous camera settings.

Hope this helps,

Robin

Thanks for your help, the gain and exposure were both already down, histogram reset didn't do anything, but restarting camera with ctrl held down fixed it! Cheers