DFK camera first light-lunar terminator

This is my first ever shot with the new DMK camera (between clouds). The shot was taken through an 80mm Orion Short tube refractor on an EQ1 mount without tracking at 30fps using a neutral filter. 300 frames stacked in registax.

farm3.static.flickr.com/2388/2408636700_09e449ec2a_m.jpg

I am quite impressed with this camera and its ease of use.

Good stuff John.
How are you getting on with “IC Capture” software? It is easy to use I think once you learn the software features and practice to get the most out of it. Looking forward to more images.

Clear skies
Mike

Hi Mike

Still learning the ropes on the software. I still don't understand the various codec compression regimes to give the highest frame rates.
The camera seems to work well even at 30fps.

John,
Does this camera have auto exposure/gain feature ?

Not sure Dave. The software that comes with it is fairly comprehensive and I have only touched the surface.
I was thinking of bringing it into the next club meeting and maybe doing a demo with a small refractor on a camera tripod for anyone who is interested.

Hi John, my camera is colour FireWire version, but here is some info that you might find useful that I posted before.
I use the camera in Y800 codec (uncompressed) and record in AVI format at 15fps (that’s the maximum frame rate for my camera) 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.
I think the Y800 uncompressed codec and recording in AVI would be good to try first, other uncompressed formats are 'RGB24', 'RGB32' and 'UYVY' would be worth experimenting with. I have also set IC capture software to record images in BMP (Windows Bitmap) format at 1 second intervals with the Moon as a target. I set the software to take 100 BMP images limit and then combined them in “Deep Space Stacker” which is a free program, the results are excellent.
Just play around with the software John and make note of the settings which best suit your astronomical targets of interest. There is an associated help file but I find it limited in its information that is presented.
There is a nice feature entitled “Region of Interest” which lets you select regions on the live image that you wish to record and exclude the rest of the image, as in your recent image of the Moon you could have selected the terminator and then adjusted a number of settings such as brightness, gamma, sharpness and exposure etc. to bring out the best details possible. Likewise this feature could be used to concentrate on certain brighter lunar features.

Clear Skies
Mike