Atik In-Camera Column Repair Tool vs. Column Repair During Processing

[monkeybird747]

I have an Atik 16200 that is new to me. It has a few partially defective columns. One is about 3/4 of the column, and the other two are 1/3 to 2/3 the height of the column.

If I understand the column repair tool correctly, the repair happens in-camera after image capture, so the images collected already have the repair applied. This is enabled through the ASCOM driver interface, and is working well with SGP so far. After loading the correction onto the camera I made my dark library with this enabled, and the frames look pretty clean. I can't detect any artifacts as a result of the column repair. The only possible downside I see is that the Atik repair tool doesn't seem to let you specify a column height, so I assume there is a correction taking place for the full height of a partially defective column. If that assumption is accurate it seems unnecessary, but I'm not sure if it really makes a difference.

The other option, besides relying on dithering (which I do), would be to create a bad pixel map in Pixinsight's Cosmetic Correction tool. I believe this does allow you to specify a column height range.

Is there an advantage to correcting the defects in-camera as opposed to fixing them during processing? Was I correct in turning on the column repair feature to create my dark library and master bias frames since I intend to use the column repair feature to capture my lights? I'm assuming if I decide to not use the feature I would need to reshoot my dark and bias library.

Finally, does anyone know if the two different methods above function is the same basic way, in that they use some kind of adjacent pixel interpolation scheme to make the repair? If there is no significant advantage to fixing during processing I would like to continue to use the in-camera function, as it seems to be one less thing to worry about in processing.

 

Cheers,

 

MB747