I know you advise using matching darks when calibrating CMOS images and leaving Bias frames out, but this camera is so quiet in the dark realm that there's almost nothing there other than the bias. Making and keeping a catalogue of darks, for four binning formats, especially when the flats are automated and thus of varying exposures, is pretty burdensome. Literally, the average e count in a flat short flat is like one above a bias, and after four minutes, the average has risen from 248 to 250!. I hear my imaging friends (we do science) saying they don't do darks with similar chip cameras. Your thoughts please. Bruce
Although the SONY arrays are incredibly clean, there ARE hot pixels. It's worthwhile calibrating those out. If you don't take account of the bias level during calibration, then the flats will not work correctly. Subtraction and multiplication are not commutable. FYI the binning is all done in software - in the driver. The IMX455 monochrome sensors do not have a usable hardware binning mode. So you can bin you calibration frames after the fact.
Will Maxim do that for me during the calibration process or do I need to physically reproduce the 1X1 and bin the copy and repeat for the other bins?
BTW, I had to recreate the dark sequence because, despite saving it, it did not, in fact, save. Also, partway through, I happened to notice that the Luminance filter was being used, not the dark filter even though I had selected the dark filter in the sequence! You could ruin a lot of images that way.
Oh, and regarding my question above, if I need to bin the 1X1 myself, can I do that with the master, or do I have to start with the individual exposures?
Sorry, one more question. You would not think I have been doing this for nearly ten years, but this camera is different from what I am used to. I screwed up and processed some images without all the necessary master flats in place and it just took out the dark. With all the masters in place, will maxim know what needs to be done, or do I need to go into the Advanced settings and select what remains to be done? Thanks
I'd suggest generating master frames, and then separately binning them. Should work. Dark - you want it set up to AUTOMATICALLY select the dark filter slot when you select Dark frames. Setup tab, Camera 1 Options, set Filter to Use As Shutter to the correct slot. Then whenever you tell MaxIm DL to take dark frames it will automatically select the dark slot. See https://cdn.diffractionlimited.com/help/maximdl/HIDD_SETUP.htm Set Calibration - Per the user manual "Normally these functions should all remain enabled, since MaxIm DL automatically determines the correct files to use." Do NOT turn off the "Use Bias", "Use Dark", or "Use Flat" check boxes. The software knows what to do with calibration frames. These options are provided to override the default behavior, and are only very rarely used. See https://cdn.diffractionlimited.com/help/maximdl/MaxIm-DL.htm#t=HID_PROC_SETCALIB.htm
Okay, to be totally clear, I can leave all the boxes checked and just don't include any bias frames for it to use.
Doug, sorry to be a pest, but I can't make darks. I have spent hours and hours fooling with this. Not sure what I have because the program did not save (or remember) to use dark filter, not luminous, maybe that is corrected, at least for now, it seems to have stuck this time. But more importantly, it keeps stopping, saying it can't save an image. It will run a while, then throw that error. Sometimes I can restart it, sometimes I have to reboot. What's more, when I go to close it to reboot, it wants to know if I want to save the last image. If I say yes, it says you can't because it is already saved! Help! I have time-sensitive images that I need to process.
