Camera quality issues?

[scopesnc]

Hello

It is not meant as harm to ask my question , but I have to ask it. How good is ,or does Atik have quality control for the Infinity camera? I have now seen and know of at least 4 cameras all new with issues . One was DOA on arrival. 2 had really bad hot pixels and one actually had lose screws inside the camera that rattled around. Now all of us are checking for this and worrying about the camera working or not. I have only seen 4 working ones and one of them is also in question with a possible issue. For the $1000 being spent I would think this is not a good thing.
This has me worried as mine is new in the Box waiting on my OTA to arrive. It is starting to seem as if there may not be any kind of Q C on these cameras coming out of Portugal. It's as if this may be a pot luck camera. I mean no offense to Atik , but first impressions are what they are at this time. I'll keep my fingers crossed for mine to work well now. They seem to be great when they work. Wonderful views are being shown.

[Astrogate]

Hi Jim,

I really hope this is not the case and my new Atik Infinity should arrive this week. I have used over my 18 years of CCD imaging and observing various cameras from Starlightxpress,  Sbig and Mallincam. All three companies had excellent service and quality control, so I am hoping that Atik will follow suit. I will see if the quality control is there and will post my opinion here. I am considering a cooled mono camera for Ha observing and some odd imaging. If the Atik Infinity has the same issues that I have heard from recent other buyers then the Atik 460 will be out for me and I will go back to Starlightxpress and buy the Trius-SX694.

Chris A
Astrogate

[scopesnc]

Chris

I'm only speaking about the Infinity camera because that is the one camera I have followed and bought now. I can not say anything about other Atik cameras except for good words have been spoken each time someone does speak about them.

The Infinity is the only camera I have heard of having Q C issues from Atik. Maybe Mr Chambers will work on that part for us. I hope so. Word spreads fast in our little world and I want support for for a long time with updates in the software. I don't want to see it pulled from the market due to bad quality killing sales  My fingers are crossed, it was just a bad run of cams,  a one time thing. Then again I don't see any kind of QC tag signed in my box anywhere. Time will tell I guess.

[Steve]

Hello Jim and Chris,

Good to see you both on the Atik forum,  as you say its a small world.

Regarding the reliability of the Infinity.  Its actually the least complex of our cameras and has the lowest rate of returns of any of our products.  The person whose screw came loose in transit was able to replace it, we have subsequently changed our assembly methods in order to prevent a reoccurrence.   The hot pixel issues were more related to the way software handles hot pixels when they is little movement of the object between frames.  This has been significantly improved and we continue to improve the software with new features.

These issues need to be put into the context as we have sold a huge number of these cameras over the past few months.  Indeed I believe they are still on back order as we fight to keep up with new orders.

Thank you for ordering the camera,  I am sure you will enjoy using it.

Cheers
Steve

[Astrogate]

Hi Steve,

Thank you very much for the response and I very much look forward to using my new Atik Infinity soon. I must say that I am very impressed with what I have been seeing lately by several users of this camera regarding near real-time observing. The software looks excellent and like anything new there will be improvements or added features as time goes by. Thank you for coming out with such a very useful software/camera that works very well!

Cheers,

Chris A

[StarMike]

I am very please with my Atik Infinity Mono.  No issues and was up and viewing with it in 5 minutes.  Got some great shot of Orion and after two years of trying with another camera, saw the Horsehead for the first time.

[Astrogate]

Awesome to hear Mike and thank you!

[scopesnc]

Steve

Thanks for the reply on this subject. It all sounds very good. Atik is on top of things I see, and that is great news . Looking forward to first light with mine this weekend I hope.

[Astrogate]

I received my new Atik Infinity color camera today and I must say that the quality was top notch. There was nothing for me to complain about except for the cloud over the next several days

I will post my results on 1st light

Chris A
Astrogate

[donboysail]

I received my replacement Infinity yesterday, the first one was defective.  I had lots of issues getting the software in Parallels on my Macs to recognize the camera.  Parallels loaded everything but the software didn't load the camera.  I finally was able to get it to work in Win 7 but not Win XP of Parallels.  What I had to do was first load the software with the enclosed CD, restart Win 7 and then download the Beta 3 version.  After doing that it was able to fully function.  I had to use this procedure on my MacBook Pro and on my Mac Pro. 

It might be nice if the software was Mac compatible.

By the way both Infinity cameras I received had a tremendous amount of dust on the glass window. 

Don

[donboysail]

A few more comments and requests.

First off what is 'Nmr SD' and how to use it. Can't find reference to it in latest 1.3 manual?

It would be nice to have an exposure countdown.

Also Mac compatible Infinity software.

A switch to turn off the tags that pop up when manipulating the histogram and also possibly give alternate arrow key control or better histogram slider control.

And I second all the other suggestions I and others have previously made.

Don

[Astrogate]

Hi Don,

I looked at my CCD glass with a good magnifier and there was a few dust spots that I immediately cleaned but not too bad. No loose screws, not even any finger prints (yes I know I am being silly) on the camera body. I only wished that Atik would include or offer a male t-thread to female c- thread low profile adapter ( 3 mm) like this one from Scope Stuff  which would allow me to directly connect my male C - thread reducer or my Canon ESO to C - thread adapter to use my camera lenses. I did buy as you know the one from ZWO but it is not a low profile adapter at 6 mm and stick out further therefore increase the backfocus and I am more worried about reaching focus with the lenses.

http://www.scopestuff.com/ss_t2ca_L.jpg

BTW - I read that you can use the left mouse button and click on the histogram where you want to move the black point and  you can use the right mouse button and click on the histogram where you want to move the white point.

Cheers,

Chris

[donboysail]

There was some other things I wanted to comment on and one is the camera orientation.  I find it strange that the camera has to be oriented vertically to conform to the normal directional movement of the mount.  I would think that a horizontal orientation would be better so as to aide in clearing the mount base on Alt/Az fork mounted scopes so that one can use the proper directional orientation HC keys.

And one more observation, I notice that it takes less exposure time for the same object with the Infinity than with the 414EX, with the same scope and FR settings.  Is that because the Infinity software increases or varies the gain or runs at a higher gain setting?

Don

[scopesnc]

Chris

I looked mine over and can not find any dust , but first light will tell all. Mine did not come with a dust cap over the barrel and I did not know it was supposed to come with one till Don told me. I found that kind of strange that it didn't. He said it came with one of those rubber kind of black ones. I have a few  sort of like that and used one. How mine did not get any dust on that glass is kind of lucky, but it is covered now. It was in a zip lock bag so that may have helped it not get any dust.

My hope is for first light this weekend , but bad weather may delay my OTA getting here in time. Stupid tornado's mess up lots of things including UPS shipping. My fingers are crossed. 

[Astrogate]

Jim,

My Infinity did come with a black rubber end cap. My skies are clouded out for probably another week

I hope you have clear skies this weekend and please let me know if your going on Google +.

Cheers,

Chris