Windows 10 up-to-date
Sharpcap 4.1 Pro
Canon EOS 60 Da
ASCOM 7
ASCOM.DSLR
I started Sharpcap and was able to connect to my mount and the Canon EOS with no problem. Slew, platesolve worked. Livestack colledted images Ok.
However, the displayed image was black stars on white background. The image was close to being in focus.
I found a discussion on CloudyNights and changed the settings to:
connection: CanonSDK
Image Mode: color16
Colour Space: RGB48
Read Mode: RAW
capture area was 5202 x 3464. Chip is 5184 x 3456
Now, Livestack displayed the image as blue-green stars on a white background.
The processed image on disk was somewhat normal, with an obvious red shift.
What am I doing wrong?
Tom Dean
Sharpcap Pro Canon EOS 60 Da Video Reversed
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Re: Sharpcap Pro Canon EOS 60 Da Video Reversed
Hi Tom,
does the ASCOM.DSLR driver setup window have an option for 'Maximum ADU' or 'Maximum Pixel Value' or something like that? If that is set too low (for instance to 4096 or 16384 when your camera is producing pixel values up to 65535) then you can get strange effects including
* Weird colour banding on terrestrial imaging
* Overly bright backgrounds
* Strange star colours or stars with dark cores (or dark rings around the core).
On the other hand, if it is set too high, you will never get white in the image - even over-exposed areas will be grey.
So, if you have that sort of adjustment, it's worth checking and trying out different values. 65535 might be a good bet for a 16 bit capable sensor.
If that doesn't help then the thing to do is to try to simplify the problem by turning off live stacking and just looking at individual frames to see if you can work out what is going on more easily in that situation. In fact 'normal' terrestrial images are good for this as they have a full range of brightnesses and tend to show problems in a way that is easier to understand. Feel free to share a sample image/screenshot if you need more feedback based on what is seen.
cheers,
Robin
does the ASCOM.DSLR driver setup window have an option for 'Maximum ADU' or 'Maximum Pixel Value' or something like that? If that is set too low (for instance to 4096 or 16384 when your camera is producing pixel values up to 65535) then you can get strange effects including
* Weird colour banding on terrestrial imaging
* Overly bright backgrounds
* Strange star colours or stars with dark cores (or dark rings around the core).
On the other hand, if it is set too high, you will never get white in the image - even over-exposed areas will be grey.
So, if you have that sort of adjustment, it's worth checking and trying out different values. 65535 might be a good bet for a 16 bit capable sensor.
If that doesn't help then the thing to do is to try to simplify the problem by turning off live stacking and just looking at individual frames to see if you can work out what is going on more easily in that situation. In fact 'normal' terrestrial images are good for this as they have a full range of brightnesses and tend to show problems in a way that is easier to understand. Feel free to share a sample image/screenshot if you need more feedback based on what is seen.
cheers,
Robin
Re: Sharpcap Pro Canon EOS 60 Da Video Reversed
I set the Max ADU to 2^14-1. May not have changed anything.
There is a button in the camera controls, round, split vertically, light and dark. When I clicked this, the video turned to normal.
Thanks for the help.
Tom Dean
There is a button in the camera controls, round, split vertically, light and dark. When I clicked this, the video turned to normal.
Thanks for the help.
Tom Dean
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Re: Sharpcap Pro Canon EOS 60 Da Video Reversed
Hi Tom,
ah, the one shown here : https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#Display%20Stretch ?
That would make sense as that is the 'invert displayed image' button. Some people like that option for seeing faint fuzzy things, finding that black on a white background is easier than white on a black background. I'm afraid I didn't think of that (it's off by default). It's likely that you had turned it on at some point in the past and then SharpCap had been restoring that 'on' setting every time that you re-opened the camera.
For futuer reference, one trick that his handy when this sort of thing happens is to hold down the <CTRL> key when opening the camera - that stops SharpCap from re-loading the last used settings just that one time, putting the camera settings back to default. You can also turn off restoring the camera settings entirely in the settings. The auto-restore of settings is one of those features that is useful about 95% of the time, and then throws up an issue like this now and then
cheers,
Robin
ah, the one shown here : https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#Display%20Stretch ?
That would make sense as that is the 'invert displayed image' button. Some people like that option for seeing faint fuzzy things, finding that black on a white background is easier than white on a black background. I'm afraid I didn't think of that (it's off by default). It's likely that you had turned it on at some point in the past and then SharpCap had been restoring that 'on' setting every time that you re-opened the camera.
For futuer reference, one trick that his handy when this sort of thing happens is to hold down the <CTRL> key when opening the camera - that stops SharpCap from re-loading the last used settings just that one time, putting the camera settings back to default. You can also turn off restoring the camera settings entirely in the settings. The auto-restore of settings is one of those features that is useful about 95% of the time, and then throws up an issue like this now and then
cheers,
Robin