I just did 10 hours with an EOS using the CFA image saving option. The images were very flat with just a few bright stars and no nebulosity. I integrated 600minutes of exposure and the result was just a flat star field. I switched to a QSI camera and I saw more nebulosity with a single 3-minute exposure. The EOS was set to ISO 800, 10 min subs. I had an IDAS LP filter in the throat. It is picking up M41 nebulosity if I do a 30-second exposure normally with an EOS lens and do an image preview in the camera.
I don’t believe the result and wonder if I have done something wrong. Is the CFA option the best? I’m processing with PixInsight using the CFA option in the batch pre-processor.
Same problem for me . I can not stack the images with DSS ( not enough stars found even if i set the star detection slider in DSS to the minimal 2%.
Never happened with BYE.
My issue is more unusual. The flats, bias’, darks and lights all went through PixInsight PreProcessing ok, including registration. I am clipping on a QSI through a red filter with a 3-min exposure yet with the EOS, a 10 min exposure at ISO 800 is a glimmer.
I just tried normal indoor pictures through SGP - it shows pictures as I would expect. The shutter is operating correctly and the ISO is set correctly too. It is the first real time I have used an EOS for imaging and I cannot believe it is that insensitive. Very odd.
I’ll poke it at M41 through the refractor tomorrow and see what happens. That is a lot brighter than the cone nebula.
I also had problems with this and found FITS + DSLR is something to avoid with SGP, it doesn’t seem to handle it correctly at least not with the 6D that i used.
For investigation to be possible i suggest you save FITS + RAW and send to the SGP team.
Hi. I ran into this last summer and found that I needed to invoke mirror lock-up to get a correct exposure. With BYEOS you don’t do that and it never occurred to me that it was required. In essence, what was happening was that I would set a 30sec exposure (T3i with Hyperstar) and when it started you would hear a shutter click followed by another click a second later. The sequence would run to the end of 30sec and then the next exposure would execute in the same fashion. Everything I imaged was vastly under exposed similar to what you’ve described. It seems I was getting a 1 sec exposure with a 29sec delay. Invoking mirror lock-up solved the issue. Start the sequence…one click and 30 sec later a second click. Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Gord
This is more complicated. There are many different EOSs out there and DIGIC levels. As time moved on, the subsequent DIGIC versions allowed more remote control via USB. There are no mirror issues with the 60Da as far as I can tell. It operates on the long exposures with the mirror flipping up and the exposure counts on the display.
I just did a comparison of Nebulosity 4, APT and SGP with the EOS. Using PI to read them, the CR2 files from SGP and APT were identical (Dull grey, covering about half of the dynamic range) the Nebulosity Fit file was scaled and already debayered (color) and the SGP fits file was also grey, but occupying a different range of values. ( I think this has to do with the different bit depths of the RAW file and FITS)
I also found out something about the EOS. Taking a bias and a 300s dark frame in quick succession, the dark frame had lower values than the bias frame. No wonder the calibration was awful. Long exposure noise reduction is disabled but the camera is doing something strange. As I increase the exposure, the minimum pixel value decreases.
Looking at the integrated dark frames - they look like bias frames. It appears that the camera is doing something in the background but I thought I disabled the noise reduction settings.
I never bothered with dark frames on the 6D, instead i used dithering and that took care of the noise very nicely.
Interesting - I changed one further setting on the EOS - High ISO NR and it seems to be producing a more realistic dark frame. I don’t consider 800 a high ISO but ho hum. There is still some form of subtraction going on though, the minimum level drops with exposure time. (The camera is operating at freezing point and it occurs that if they have assumed a default dark current in normal ambient conditions, it might be over-compensating)
Well - I made a CR2 file created with a cable release for 10 minutes onto SD card and it was not the same as one created by SGP over USB. The one on the memory card has hot pixels and the one over USB looks more like a bias frame, with the same stretch. (Gamma?)
With SGP, I measured the min, max, mean and SD for dark frames from 1 second to 10 minutes. The mean in each case was identical and the maximum did not change either (it went up and down by a small amount). The minimum seemed to reduce with exposure time.
I have just tried back-to-back comparison of BYEOS, APT, SGP and Intervalometer CR2 files. The min, max and mean values are very similar but the intervalometer saved onto card version has a slightly higher SD reading. It is hard to be certain but it does seem that files sent out the USB port are quieter than those saved onto the card. I tried to keep the temperature constant with intervals but there was some variation.
I loaded the files into a dropbox if anyone is interested. All 600s @ ISO800. I also popped the FITS file there too from SGP. Within the histogram it occupies a middle space (is it scaled?) - I definitely think I will use the CR2 file setting from now on.
I think I found a problem. I was using 2.6.0.6 and took bias, dark and light frames (FITS). The dark and light frames were 600 seconds long but both strongly resembled the bias frames. The light frames looked like a bias frame with a few bright stars on it. All were taken with my obsy computer but I don’t think the EOS 60Da is actually exposing for that time at all. I should have realised from the histogram. The light pollution should have moved the peak to the middle for that kind of time.
My subsequent tests were done with a different computer using the same SGP version and both CR2 and FITS formats. Saving CR2 files to the memory card seems reliable (though there is definitely some form of dark frame compensation going on in the RAW file) but at least the SD and max values of the bias frame are considerably smaller than that from a 5-min dark frame. I’ll load up 2.6.0.10 and try again.
Just found this:
I think I fell into the trap. Drat and double drat, I just wasted two clear nights
Oh no 
, the same problem … Wasted 3 cristal clear nights.
It was a canon 5d MKII but i think that doesn’t matter.
I just connected my Eos to SGP and watched live what happened 
I took 3 sec expores instead of 600 sec.
Humbling, isn’t it. I have no excuse, the instruction manual is very clear…
Anyway I started doing calibration files with 2.6.0.10 and it seems fine now.