Product Reviews
- Reviews
- Questions
- 4.62
- Optolong L
- William Optics Z61
- sampling
- sub exposures
- ATIK 414ex Color
- filter
- round stars
- images
- camera
United States6 months later...
I wanted to post a couple images I took with the ATIK 414ex Color. I paired this camera with a William Optics Z61 with the .8x reducer. I was getting 4.62 arc seconds per pixel so I was way under sampling, but I got my absolute best sub exposures this way. I was easily keeping sharp round stars throughout 10 minute sub exposures and cooled down to -25 degrees, almost 30 degrees cooler than ambient. I had the Optolong L-Extreme filter and both images are approximately 5 hours each.
Great Camera
My AP experience is less than a year, and I got this camera about a month ago. I had a blast using the infinity software and watching the images live stack. I took calibration frames, but due to the software, I did not have a way to combine the light frames with the calibration frames. No matter, with the ATIK 414, it was still the best image of the dumbbell nebula I had ever taken. I was using a Canon Rebel T6 before and it had a much larger sensor, however, I had to crop much more of it in order to get rid of the vignetting cause by trying to stretch the image. With the ATIK, I had so much contrast to begin with that I could back off the stretching and still have a great image. The software wasn't the most intuitive at first, but Steve Chambers, company CEO, has a lot of videos to help get you up to speed. One piece of advice, if you are going to save an image in the infinity software, hover your mouse pointer over the buttons at the top of the screen. That is how you choose where to save your data. Infinity does not save the individual images in color for some reason, or at least I haven't figure out how. For saving the images in color, use Artemis Capture or Dusk. This way you can combine your light frames with your calibration frames. I have an 8" SCT and I use an f/6.3 reducer and I could probably fit four dumbbell nebula images in the four corners of the field of view. I wish I had a bigger sensor, but I also had to manage the cost. This was a great way to get into CCD imaging and I love it.
Environment not cooperating!
Fast safe shipping, two days and free. Looks beautiful in the box but 22" of snow and wind chill of -46 degrees. Will probably wait until conditions improve. Meantime I'm trying to figure out the included software. January, 2019. Warm regards, Michael
Environment not cooperating!
Fast safe shipping; two days and free. Looks beautiful in the box but 22" of snow and wind chill of -46 degrees. Will probably wait until conditions improve. Meantime I'm trying to figure out the included software. January, 2019. Warm regards, Michael