Large Format Digital Photography

SteveInNZ wrote:

AudiiDudii wrote:

I'm thinking specifically of the QHY 367C and running it via SharpCap on a Surface Pro 6 tablet ... check it out at QHY 367C.

It's an impressive camera. I was considering it at one stage but there were other options that suited my needs better. I have a few QHY cameras and I use SharpCap a lot. The author is very responsive with both bug fixes and user requests.

How long are the typical exposures with your current approach ?

Because of the image quality limitations imposed by Sony's lossy compression scheme and firmware that causes the A7R's bit depth to automatically drop back to just 12 bits for exposures longer than 30 seconds, I try to keep my exposures under 30 seconds.

But that's not an accurate indication of my needs, as I generally pass on taking photos that require longer exposures due to the inevitable loss of image quality.  Realistically, 240 seconds is probably long enough, although I can probably use 360 seconds a few times each year.

I do wonder a little if you'd actually gain a great deal over your existing setup. The astro camera is very "no frills" so there's a lot more fluffing around to get an exposure.

Yes, I know.  But I already do quite a bit of fluffing about now, both before and after the actual exposures, so I don't believe this will prove to be a problem.  That said, though, it is yet another reason why I really want to try one before buying one!

If you're doing say 5 second exposures, the gain from cooling would be minimal but the time taken to get a result, longer.

Go back and look at the median-blended example I posted.  Those photos were taken at an ambient temperature of around 65 degrees; increase that 40 degrees and it will look as though fireflies are having their annual convention there!  The noise and numbers of hot/stuck pixels increases so dramatically when the ambient temp is over 100 degrees I usually put my camera away and simply stop photographing during July and August.

Of course, you can always buy a tracking mount and take up astrophotography.

That's not too likely!  Because the light pollution around here is pretty bad (although I like it for my urban nighttime photos!) and the urban lights of the Phoenix metropolitan area are still visible 90 miles away from the city, I will need to drive two hours each way to find good seeing and that's just not possible with my schedule.

But even more than that, it simply doesn't interest me.  I took a few elective courses in college, but the bug never bit me.