1 reply to this topic

[james7ca]

Nikon just released an update to their NX Tether application that has support for Pixel Shifting on the Nikon Z8.  I think this completes full support for remote operation of the Nikon Z8 and I can now see using NX Tether for all of my remote imaging when using the Nikon Z8. I think Nikon added pixel shift support to NX Tether for the Nikon Zf sometime last year, so it "only"  took them six months to support that same feature on the older but higher-end Z8. The previous version of NX Tether could be made to work with pixel shifting, but you had to enable/disable that feature with the physical buttons on the camera and then when you initiated a shutter button press using NX Tether the pixel-shifted sequence would begin. Now you have full control of this feature with all of its options directly on the remote interface provided by NX Tether.

 

And before someone takes issue with this capability or asks about its use, yes, pixel shifting can have uses even for astrophotography. I've used it for both lunar and solar imaging and even for some wide-field DSO shots. You can treat it just like a fine dither operation and it does improve the resolution you get with the Z8. If done correctly and well it's almost like having a full-frame camera with a resolution of 180 mega pixels or a pixel size of about 2.17 microns. However, in most cases you'll have to use a drizzle integration to see the full benefits.

Edited by james7ca, 16 April 2025 - 05:03 AM.

[james7ca]

Here is what the dialog looks like in NX Tether for the Pixel Shift shooting. You can set a delay before you start shooting (shown here at 10s, but can be zero) and the delay taken between each shot in the pixel shifted sequence. If the delay between each shot is set to zero then the camera will take the images as quickly as it can but still allowing the previous exposure to complete. This is a welcomed but different behavior than Nikon's normal shot interval setup where you have to include the exposure time in the delay. So, with this latter behavior if you wanted to take a series of 5 second exposures the shortest interval you could safely specify would be around 6 seconds (i.e. 5 seconds for the exposure with a 1 second delay before the next shot). However, you don't need to worry about this when doing a pixel-shifted sequence since the camera will automatically determine when it can take the next image (I guess that would be as soon as the next sensor shift has finished, normally a very short delay).

 

The only real limitation here is that each sequence is limited to a maximum of 32 frames, after that the sensor returns to its nominal position and you'd have to begin another sequence if you wanted to capture more than 32 frames. Thus, if you were doing a series of 5 second exposures the camera would stop capturing after 32 x 5s or just about 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I normally use that pause to perform a dither on the mount. Of course, if you had dark skies and were using exposures of one minute the camera would continue to take shots for more than one half hour (32 x 1m).

 

I just tried a 32 frame sequence using a 5 second exposure and it took the camera 2 minutes and 46 seconds to complete the series. So, it looks like there was approximately 6 seconds of overhead for the entire 32 frame sequence (including the time to save the RAW files to the internal CFexpress card). This works out to about 0.2 seconds per image.

 

There does, however, seem to be a restriction on where you can save the pixel-shifted images. You have to save to one of the internal cards on the camera, you can't save the files back to the remote computer (at least not during the running of the sequence itself). If you try to save the images to the "Computer" then you get a warning dialog saying that the first image in the sequence failed and thereafter the sequence is aborted.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by james7ca, 17 April 2025 - 05:48 AM.