Atik Cameras

Author Topic: Testing Infinity software with pre-recorded dark field image series  (Read 4890 times)

Hibou

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I'm trying to decide if the Infinity camera and software is useful for my non-astro imaging application, where I would like to stack in real-time simply to judge when the exposure as sufficient. I used a series of pre-recorded dark field images obtained with another camera, and have the following comments.

1) It's a pity that the software just freezes if it finds another Atik camera connected. Teething problems I guess. I would like it to work with other cameras.
2) The GUI design is not "Windows standard", perhaps because it will be used also for non-windows systems? As such there are features that are not intuitive. For example I had to read the manual to find how to reduce the full screen display to fit a window (double clicking inside the menu bar). And double-clicking the left/right mouse buttons on the image magnifies/reduces it (not obvious since the mouse pointer doesn't change shape).
3) It's not clear what's happening with stacking, and that's not described in the manual. Stacking 3 pre-recorded dark field images appears to work, but then shows only 1(4s) as "Stack Info" but "Rejected" 0. When I hit the fast back/forward buttons, it appears to start stacking again and briefly shows more frames as "Stack Info" before reverting to 1(4s) as if it is rejecting frames but not counting them as "Rejected". I would like to understand what's happening, and be able to turn rejection off, but the "Reject FWHM" toggle doesn't seem to do that for dark frames.
4) The "Image Quality" plot is something else I don't really understand, perhaps because it is specifically related to imaging stars, but it's still doing something even when I only have noise, or an image with no real stars.
5) In "Advanced Settings" the "Image Quality" fortunately allows "RawPixel", but what precisely is "BlendPixels"? The manual just says "This controls the method used to display the image". I guess it might replace hot pixels with the mean of surrounding pixels, which would be a good option. Some explanation would help.

I suppose this will improve with development. But for the moment I'm a little disappointed when I compare it with competing software. I can't really tell if it would be useful for my application or not, even though otherwise the camera looks good. In particular (unlike some other comments :-), I much prefer the compact rectangular shape and might buy it instead of the 414EX especially if it had a cooling option :-) It would be good to mention the dimensions on the product page, the read-out time and eventually read-out noise compared to the uncooled 414EX.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 01:12:27 pm by Hibou »

Hibou

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Re: Testing Infinity software with pre-recorded dark field image series
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2015, 02:12:01 pm »
I have tested the Infinity 1.2 Beta software, and it now works very well.
1) No more freezing. I can even open two simultaneous Infinity sessions. A minor point - it would be useful if the window size was saved along with other settings when the app. was closed so that it would re-open exactly the same.
2) The hints when the mouse is passed over different buttons are very helpful. It is easy to reduce the size of the image by double-clicking the header, and there are buttons to minimise or close the application. The on-screen image can be re-sized with the scroll button.
3) The option to switch off "Calc Image Movement" is great since it allows stacking when there are no stars to lock on to. A stack of 20 low-light pre-recorded TS14 images was averaged exactly the same as with ImageJ, so I know that stacking works.
4) I can see that the interface design with its big bright buttons is well suited for use in the dark for astro imaging.

Some of the other improvements concern astro imaging, which I have not tried, but for my purposes the software now works well. Thanks to Chris and all at Atik.

Jo

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Re: Testing Infinity software with pre-recorded dark field image series
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2015, 03:41:48 pm »
This is excellent to hear, and I'll make sure Chris sees this too, I'm sure he'll be delighted  :)

Jo