I am giving this a try now as the wind from yesterday has died down and I've got excellent viewing conditions.
However, as I am still new to EKOS/KSTARS and have not yet used it at night, I'm unclear whether I am doing this correctly. I did set the Measure to Fourier and I started the process with the focuser reasonably close to focused but not close enough to appear sharp. I am taking 0.001 second shots at ISO 100 with a 2 second delay. However, while images at this exposure look close to correct on the camera (could go a bit slower and still not have blown highlights), in EKOS it appears totally blown out and only if I shift the midtone slider up a bit does it appear close to a proper exposure. I am not sure how to do that in the image viewer on the Focus tab so everything is so blown out I can't tell what progress the focusing increments during Autofocus are actually doing.
I am also not clear whether there are steps I need to take during Autofocus to help with source selection, whether to use full frame or a subframe and, if a subframe, what to select, e.g., an edge, a sunspot, etc.
Suggestions?
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As I am climb my way up the learning curve for INDI, EKOS/KSTARS, their integration with my Nikon D750, DeepSkyDad AF3 and Star Adventurer 2, I'm focusing on the features that support the way I shoot. One of those is the use of Exposure Delay Mode to minimize vibration from mirror slap, particularly on shorter exposures such as lunar or solar imaging.
Although it is buried pretty deep, I was able to find the INDI setting to control exposure delay (called exposuredelaymode, almost half way down the settings on the capturesettings tab). However, it either has a bug or it just doesn't work intuitively.
There is a button for On and one for Off. On connection, the On button is highlighted but the "active" LED next to it is gray so I assume it is just inactive. Here is the behavior on my D750 when I alter the On/Off:
- if I fire the shutter without any change to exposuredelaymode, it fires immediately without delay
- if I select the On button and fire the shutter, it fires after a 2 second delay
- if I select the Off button and fire the shutter, it fires after 3 second delay
- any subsequent selection of On or Off, it behaves as above
- after shutting down INDI drivers/server and disconnecting the camera, checking its state I find that exposure delay is active, either 2 seconds or 3 seconds based on whether On or Off was selected last.
I can maybe work with this - I usually use either 2 or 3 second exposure delay anyway - but I really need the way to revert the camera back to exposure delay off without having to disconnect the camera and change it manually.
Any suggestions? Should I report this as a bug?
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For anyone else with same interest, i.e., autofocusing on the Sun or Moon, I did find an INDI solution: CCDCiel. Installing it on the Raspberry Pi 4 I have running StellarMate OS, once I use the SM Web Manager to start indiserver with profile for my camera (Nikon D750) and focuser (DeepSkyDad AF3), I can connect with CCDCiel, set autofocus mode to Planets and then start Autofocus and it appears to do a pretty solid job of getting a sharp focus. CCDCiel has a lot of overlap with EKOS/KSTARS so not sure yet which I will end up using for imaging but even if I just use CCDCiel for solar/lunar autofocus, it'll be worth having.
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I'm getting up to speed using EKOS on an Pi running StellarMateOS. I am generally getting the hang of things but I have some needs that seem to be outside of EKOS wheelhouse so I thought I would double-check here.
I shoot with a 72ED refractor, a Nikon D750, a DeepSkyDad focuser and a Star Adventurer tracker. Although an eventual goal is to do some deepsky photography utilizing SM/EKOS, I also do lunar and solar photography (white light, using Baader film filter). What I am looking for is the ability to do autofocusing on those subjects.
Based on my understanding of the EKOS documentation for the focusing module, it appears to only handle autofucusing for stars. Am I missing something? Any chance its native capabilities can be adapted for solar/lunar?
Thanks,
Nate
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