Good stuff. I got into astrophotography last year but I didn't spend much time in SharpCap initially because I was trying to learn a bunch of new stuff all at the same time, so I just stuck with NINA mostly. I gave it a shot again tonight though because the moon was out, and it's not nearly so daunting now that I know how the rest of my rig works and behaves. I did give focusing a shot but I ended up doing it manually with the "Now" and "best" numbers in the focus window.. which is how I ended up here afterwards. Thanks for the explanation, this seems like a great way to autofocus..

@michaelpowen

4 ай бұрын

Thanks for the kind words.

I seriously enjoy your videos on SharpCap - Do not stop! If you could share your config settings and other setup numbers that would be icing on the cake. Thank you so much for sharing all of your endeavors with SC it is super appreciated.

@michaelpowen

6 ай бұрын

Thank you; more videos in the works!

Thanks for the helpful video. Saved it to my astronomy tutorial playlist. :)

@michaelpowen

6 ай бұрын

Glad it helped!

Hello Mr. Michael Owen I have been in the hobby of astronomy for several years. I only use SHARPCAP which is my favorite software. I really enjoyed your precise explanation. I would love to see your video regarding deep space photography with all the parameters that can be produced by the SHARPCAP software. Thank you

@michaelpowen

6 ай бұрын

Thank you. I have some DSO videos in the works.

Hello! Great videos! Thanks! I can't find where it explains how to perform meridian flip within SharpCap. It is not clear in the SharpCap manual. Can you help me? I have an iOptron CEM40G mount. I use ASCOM and PHD2. Thanks!

@michaelpowen

3 ай бұрын

If you mean automatically, unfortunately that is beyond my sphere of knowledge. When I Goto a target, the mount automatically chooses a side depending on whether the target is east of west of the meridian. If I end up tracking crossing the meridian I will just let it track until there is a danger of collision with the mount and then re-center the target via Goto, which will automatically flip.

@salutvilarorovira9263

3 ай бұрын

@@michaelpowen Thank you very much for your explanation. It has been very useful to me!

My official go to video. Thanks. Two questions I did not see the option on where to save the capture And also Juno’s name file option? I am a fire, capture renegade, making the switch 😊

@michaelpowen

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for the positive feedback. You can set the director where captures are saved under File > SharpCap Settings > Filenames, at the very top. I don't know what "Juno's name file option" means; if you meant WinJUPOS compatible filenames for the captures, SharpCap does that automatically for all captures, nothing special required. If you mean setting the target name, that's done at the very top center above the image preview window.

Very useful, thanks. I keep trying to understand this focus routine on sharpcap but it continually defies the practice, when solar imaging. Will revisit after watching this. Did you solve screen re-fresh rate, as I have the same problem ( remote connection to pc on mount, using an old laptop - just wondering if the refresh slowness is due to me overworking the laptop )

@michaelpowen

2 ай бұрын

An anomalous slow frame rate can be caused by a number of things, such as a loose or bad USB cable, accidentally connecting your USB3 cable to a non-USB3 port, leaving the camera in RAW16 instead of RAW8, having some kind of pre-processing enabled (i.e. dark subtraction, flat division, background subtraction, etc.). Sometimes the camera just starts acting strangely and I have to close and re-open SharpCap or even reboot in extreme cases.

@geoffc1862

2 ай бұрын

@michaelpowen Thanks but that's not relevant when referring display refresh - surely? I forgot to mention the display is a secondary one attached to the laptop - the laptop screen is fine, just the main display which 'stutters'. Frame rate on the cam is over 100fps.

Thank you but I cannot get it to properly work. I start out at near focus then go negative like you do in the video. However, the autofocus routine blows right past near focus and does not come back. I just windup with a soft focus blob.

@michaelpowen

6 ай бұрын

Did you see the red focus selection box containing the grayed out background and set it around the planet? If you did not see it, it probably appeared outside of your field of view. Double click in the image display to bring the focus box into view.

@TheWookie_USN

6 ай бұрын

@@michaelpowen will give it another go tomorrow night.

@newzerozeroone

5 ай бұрын

​@TJT9693 did that work?

@TheWookie_USN

5 ай бұрын

@@newzerozeroone I’ve tried many times. In my opinion there was one time that it reasonably worked, but for the most part it goes way way off focus in the opposite direction. I suspect that it’s very much dependent on seeing conditions and living in a bottle 9 Las Vegas is hurting it. I’ve been meaning to take it out to a bottle 4 or lower area outside the city but timing and weather haven’t matched up.