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Restart long exposure capture

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2025 5:08 pm
by albusmw
Hi,

I currently use SharpCap to run exposures with 300 seconds. When I see the target has enough files recorded, I change my filter wheel position and focuser and run with this new settings.
Up to now I did not find a way to explicitly restart the capture, as when the wheel changes the capture with 300 seconds is still running.
As I work-around I think I could just switch the capture time to 1s, make my changes and then switch back to 300 seconds, but is there an easier way to just restart the camera? I think the API of QHY and Moravian can do this, or did I just miss a button in SharpCap?

Best regards

Martin.

Re: Restart long exposure capture

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2025 5:32 pm
by Jean-Francois
Hello Martin,

With long exposure time, it is preferable to use the Still Mode (if the camera SDK allows it).
So the camera takes an image only on demand.
It is easy to do something different between two images.

Do you use the manual Capture or a Sequence ?

Regards,
Jean-Francois

Re: Restart long exposure capture

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2025 4:20 pm
by admin
Hi Martin,

there is no direct way of cancelling an exposure and starting another when the camera is in live view mode. As Jean-Francois suggests, you can use still mode which takes images on demand and shows a 'cancel' button when a long exposure is in progress.

The other option is to stay with live mode and use the idea you have of changing the exposure - if SharpCap sees the exposure being changed it will try to cancel the current exposure and start a new one of the right length. This is supported for almost all makes of camera. No need to change to 1s - any change will do and then change straight back - for instance you could use the F1 key which is a shortcut to make an exposure reduction followed by F2 to increase it back to 300s.

cheers,

Robin

Re: Restart long exposure capture

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2025 7:05 am
by albusmw
Hi,

I was not really aware of the still mode, and I use SharpCap since decades (this is my feeling).
Still Mode will do the job I think, but also changing exposure time is ok for me (with the risk to set the wrong one when changing back again :-) ).

Best regards

Martin.