New software patch for Philips webcams

There's a patch available for Philips webcams which allows for the capturing of RAW colour avi files. I haven't looked into it too much myself yet so can't comment. If interested, have a read of this:
astrosurf.com/astrobond/ebrawe.htm

Michael

I have used this RAW mode and it is for advanced users only.

It is possible to corrupt the firmware of the TouCam if the upgrade is not carried out correctly.

You can see the advantages of using this modification by visiting my astrophotography pages where I captured Jupiter and 2 of it's moons in RAW mode and normal mode.

Capturing in RAW mode currently means that in K3CCDTools and other avi capture programs, you capture in a "B/W mode" and convert to colour in processing. The colour pixels are recorded in the avi file and a program, AviRaw is used to debayerize the captured RAW avi. The next version of K3CCDTools due for release soon will support colour previewing of RAW mode TouCams while capturing.

Clear Skies


MarkDJ

MarkDJ,

Interesting to read that you've tried this upgrade. From looking at your excellent images, the RAW mode appaers to give a noticable improvement. I understand the new version of Registax will be released in the next weeki or two so I might wait till then before trying this upgrade.

Thanks,

Michael

Hi All,
I've noted that some programes have reciently changed so that they can use RAW files, I thought this was alot just for digital SLR cameras, BUT if the webcams can start running in this format, it makes alot more sense.

Hi all

Was pasing so thought I'd drop in. Very intereatd in this RAW mod so much so that I dusted off the cob webs (literally) on the CG11 and took this through cloud in RAW mode. It's made a huge differnce in the noise level/image quality of the To UcCam pro and the mod is easy to do. It's certainly tempted me back under the night skies! .

DaveG

Dave,
Thats an amazing shot, I'll make the mod as soon as registax can process RAW files.
BTW, I saw the pic in the files section, your link above is broken.