Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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First Miloslick and Mallincam use
#5611376 - 01/08/13 05:30 AM Attachment (68 downloads)
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I had a few things to try out tonight. First off was the Mallincam focal reducer with 5 and 10 mm spacers and Miloslick software. There was a fair amount of vignetting using this configuration on the C14 and I had to drop the gamma to 1.0 and go for longer exposures. I also lowered the gain to 1. The Miloslick software video filters allowed me to get rid of the rest of the vignetting although there looks like the black got clipped a bit. I was fighting clouds off and on and high haze made the vignetting look worse than it probably is. The software allows dark subtraction on the fly and to stack up to five frames. It also automatically takes a series of images. Nice. Stacking certainly smoothed out the images. I have included a couple to show you the results. The first is M 97 at 60 seconds exposure and F3 or so - I have yet to calculate the exact focal reduction but it seems to be a wider field than when I used a Meade F3.3 focal reducer and 2 inch extension tube. Great software for the Mallincam.
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5611378 - 01/08/13 05:32 AM Attachment (55 downloads)
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And M 64. 90 seconds exposure and 5 frames averaged in Miloslick.
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5611380 - 01/08/13 05:35 AM Attachment (52 downloads)
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And just for fun, M 97 again, this time five 60 second images summed.
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nytecam
Postmaster
Reged: 08/20/05
Loc: London UK
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5613142 - 01/09/13 04:40 AM
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Very interesting results Dwight ;-)
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: nytecam]
#5613174 - 01/09/13 06:06 AM
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Yes, interesting results is right! I didn' use the dark frame subtraction which it does on the fly nor amp glow removal. I will go back to the Meade focal reducer as it vignettes much less, at least with this setup. Then I can use less gain (0.45) and shorter exposures to obtain a similar image. The frame averaging really reduces the noise and gives a nice smooth result. Using Webcammax I am able to use all the software tools on NightSkiesNetwork and present a much improved image. The software is updated frequently with improvements so it can only get better.
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James Cunningham
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 08/07/10
Loc: Maryland
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5615030 - 01/10/13 08:21 AM
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I also use Miloslick software and the Mallincam. I have not used the stacking yet. Just how do you stack the images?
Thanks.
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: James Cunningham]
#5615482 - 01/10/13 12:57 PM
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Hi Jimmy: to enable stacking, select frame stacking from the drop down menu (the one that starts with exposure settings) and the frame stacking menu appears. You can then chose to either sum or average, the number of frames to use, and to do it in a rollon fashion. You can stack from 2 to 5 frames. I chose average and rolling - I found the sum blew out the image with the exposure times I was using. Sum would be useful if your mount didn't track all that well and you were limited to short exposures. I have had just a couple of hours experience so far and I am looking forward to some more time to fully explore how Miloslick can enhance my images.
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James Cunningham
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 08/07/10
Loc: Maryland
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5615494 - 01/10/13 01:03 PM
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Thank you. Can you choose how many frames to take or does the software do that for you? Also, should I use less integration and then stack to get the best images?
Jim
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altair1956
super member
Reged: 07/05/09
Loc: Light polluted central Mass
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: James Cunningham]
#5615665 - 01/10/13 02:43 PM
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Thanks to this thread, I downloaded the control program and tried it with my extreme last night. I am very favorably impressed. I tried out the amp glow reducing part and found it very effective. I like that you can put things like time and camera stamps on the images and also that you can have a lot more text on the image if you want than with the prior control program I was using. Very easy to use, lots of great extra features over what I had been working with.
Edited by altair1956 (01/10/13 02:46 PM)
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HowardK
professor emeritus
Reged: 10/20/10
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: altair1956]
#5615754 - 01/10/13 03:42 PM
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It's far superior....settings get to the camera every time
Imo to the other control.....
Bill will release soon v1.4 with a smoother amp glow filter and the ability to change text font
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ahopp
sage
Reged: 05/24/12
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: HowardK]
#5615792 - 01/10/13 04:03 PM
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I just bought and setup this app this morning. Was very impressed with both the application and the documentation. Used it with my Xtreme and it was impressive.
Looking forward to getting it out under the night sky with my 14" LX850, as soon as they ship it back from Meade, via recall.
Tony
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mclewis1
Thread Killer
Reged: 02/25/06
Loc: New Brunswick, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: ahopp]
#5615807 - 01/10/13 04:10 PM
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A suggestion ...
When everyone is discussing the Miloslick software how about letting us know if you are running it on Mac OS or Windows. There's lots of commonality but there are some differences that might affect expectations.
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HowardK
professor emeritus
Reged: 10/20/10
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: mclewis1]
#5615897 - 01/10/13 05:01 PM
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Windows in boot camp on a macbook pro
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: altair1956]
#5616066 - 01/10/13 06:59 PM
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Hi Jim: you can select from 2 to 5 frames to stack. Select sum for shorter exposures or average to smooth out noise on longer ones. I prefer averaging for the smooth result.
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James Cunningham
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 08/07/10
Loc: Maryland
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5616253 - 01/10/13 08:53 PM
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Thanks. Should my integratio be less than normal when stacking? Is it trial and error? I wanted to try it tonight but the weather is bad.
Thanks
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: James Cunningham]
#5616338 - 01/10/13 09:48 PM
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Hi Jimmy: I tried stacking a couple of times but my exposures were too long and it blew the image out. Some factors I had were: fairly large scope, fast focal ratio, and a fairly weak LPS filter. If you were using a slower scope and a stronger filter (like UHC or Ha) that you could sum short exposures which I have yet to try and the winter storm outside tonight will delay further experimenting until at least Saturday.
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mattflastro
Vendor - Astrovideo Systems
Reged: 07/31/09
Loc: Brevard County , FL
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: altair1956]
#5616820 - 01/11/13 08:22 AM
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Quote:
Thanks to this thread, I downloaded the control program and tried it with my extreme last night. I am very favorably impressed. I tried out the amp glow reducing part and found it very effective. I like that you can put things like time and camera stamps on the images and also that you can have a lot more text on the image if you want than with the prior control program I was using. Very easy to use, lots of great extra features over what I had been working with.
Forgive my naive question as a non-Mallincam owner, does the Mallincam HAVE amp glow ? Everywhere I read about it I could only see praise and superlatives, not a word of amp glow. Now here comes a piece of software that eliminates it that must not be spoken???
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ahopp
sage
Reged: 05/24/12
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: mclewis1]
#5616848 - 01/11/13 08:46 AM
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Mac Book Pro, running Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2)
Miloslick 1.3.4
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Dwight J
sage
Reged: 05/14/09
Loc: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: mattflastro]
#5617016 - 01/11/13 10:49 AM
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I don't think there is any conspiracy to "conceal" amp glow from Mallincams. Most people ignore it as it is up in the left corner and well controlled by cooling. My old Canon 300D had horrendous readout noise but it was easily eliminated by dark frame subtraction. If you examine the images I posted in this thread you can see the amount of amp glow I get with a Mallincam Extreme with the cooler on full. I did no amp glow compensation nor dark frame subtraction and amp glow has to be searched for. In the old story of the emperor has no clothes in this case he is fully dressed.
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mattflastro
Vendor - Astrovideo Systems
Reged: 07/31/09
Loc: Brevard County , FL
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Re: First Miloslick and Mallincam use
[Re: Dwight J]
#5617221 - 01/11/13 12:46 PM
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Quote:
I don't think there is any conspiracy to "conceal" amp glow from Mallincams. Most people ignore it as it is up in the left corner and well controlled by cooling. My old Canon 300D had horrendous readout noise but it was easily eliminated by dark frame subtraction. If you examine the images I posted in this thread you can see the amount of amp glow I get with a Mallincam Extreme with the cooler on full. I did no amp glow compensation nor dark frame subtraction and amp glow has to be searched for. In the old story of the emperor has no clothes in this case he is fully dressed.
I don't know about fully dressed or conspiracy .
I only noticed that all blacks in those posted images are hard clipped . I mean seriously, really, really hard clipped . All black pixels have the absolute and unheard value of exactly 0 . No standard deviation, no noise, nada, ZERO. No faint stars just below the detection threshold to induce slightly higher than ZERO black pixels. No gamma ray impacts to leave a brighter pixel. I am not even mentioning thermal noise or readout noise because obviously these are also ZERO.
Have you looked at the histogram ?
Maybe that's the secret of the software, or maybe the camera itself.
Just automatically clipping the black level aggresively in order to show a perfectly uniform pitch black background with the physically impossible level of 0 for each and every pixel under a certain threshold, generating this way very aesthetically pleasing images .
Edited by mattflastro (01/11/13 12:50 PM)
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