Firewire Camera - any experience

surely its much less sensitive than the mono so I wonder how much less?.....if one's interested in planetary imaging, I also use the philips SPC900NC ($55USD) so I wonder if that's just not a better option?

If I can jump in for a sec, I doubt that the colour camera is less sensitive, why would it be?, its the same chip with a bayer colour matrix over it, the matrix gives slightly less detail, I cant imagine there is alot of sensitivity difference..
The question is, on average is the seeing limiting the image quality below what potential extra detail the monochrome camera would give you. I've seen comparison on the web and I'm not convinced the extra detail is worth the effort.

You may be right.....but from what I understood, because a color cam has a pixel arrangement such that each pixel is only sensitive to one frequency (R,G or , its typically quite a bit less sensitive than a mono....that makes sense since I frequently hear that mono's are 3x more sensitive. Worth investigating however since my experience with color AP dedicated cams is very limited

edit: Did a quick look on the web..here's a cut/paste of astronomy-service.com's description of its color ATIK cam

"ATiK - 16 IC Cameras

The chip is extremely sensitive. This allows you to take excellent images of faint nebulae and galaxies. The colour version of the camera takes colour images automatically, but as a consequence is somewhat less sensitive. The monochrome variant is more sensitive and you can still take colour images by using LRGB filters "

Thats very interesting, I hadn't thought of it like that.
It'll be very interesting to see how my new, err Franks new camera will fair when he get its.

Here's a little mind game, is the sensitivity of the monochrome camera used with the colour filters the same as the normal colour camera?

Hiya again Dave.

No...I don't think it is because ALL of the cam pixels are still all concentrating on the same frequencies Its the dividing of the pixels to DIFFERENT frequencies that causes the prob me thinks

Hi FoxK

Welcome to the world of Imaging Source cameras, I like the images you are producing. I have the ½” CCD colour FireWire version (DFK 41AF02.AS) with a resolution of 1280 x 960 at max 15fps, with IR filter fitted. Two reasons why I went for this camera is that firstly I got the camera at a very good price and secondly I feel I would not be confident enough and perhaps lack knowledge of filters, filter wheels and techniques etc, perhaps next year I will go this route.

I use the camera in Y800 uncompressed AVI format at 15fps at full resolution with IC Capture software so the object under observation appears B/W on the screen, but when processed later in RegiStax V4 under “Debayer option” the computer can then do all the calculations to align and stack a colour RGB image. This saves disk space rather than when imaging in real time and generating 3 times larger files due to capturing colour images at the scope and tasking the PC bus.
It’s mostly fun trying to learn astrophotography and processing, although there are some headaches along the way, here is an image of the Moon I took recently, the Moon is a lovely target to image and indeed a celestial body I want to learn more about. I hope that I can improve the images over time through hands on experience and learning from all the other amateurs that visit the IFAS forum. I have recently purchased a Stellavue x5 PowerMate, so looking forward to trying this out as a matter of interest and experimentation.

farm3.static.flickr.com/2419/2283689312_e53844311d_o.jpg

Clear skies
Mike

Which reminds me, is the IFAS lunar 100 challenge finalised yet?

Clear skies
Mike