DSLR MasterDark creation

[Cleon_Wells]

Attached is a screen shoot of sub 589 Calibrated with two different MasterDarks.
The upper left image used 15 calibrated dark subs that were integrated with a Pixel Rejection setting of, Winsorized Sigma clipping and no normalization . The lower right image used the same calibrated dark subs and integrated with a Pixel Reject setting of Winsorized Sigma an normalization of Scale+Zero offset. It’s interesting that both of these light calibrations had large Dark Scaling Factors (over 100.0). I don’t have a problem with these calibrated dark subs using  linear fit clipping and no normalization during integration or just integrating the uncalibrated dark fit files with WS and NoNorm and checking the calibrate box in the MasterDark section of ImageCalibration.
Cleon

[pfile]

something is wrong here, you should not see dark scaling factors that high.

sometimes i forget to tell ImageCalibration to load the CR2s as raw, and then i see large dark scaling factors. in my case i see 25x or so; i don't think i've ever seen 100.

[Cleon_Wells]

something is wrong here, you should not see dark scaling factors that high.

Actually it's over 200, check out the attached image.

[pfile]

well it looks like you are loading the light CR2s properly, from the dcraw command line. are you sure that when you integrated the master dark that the CR2s were read in as raw? the master dark in the background was debayered explicitly but of that doesn't mean the master dark was not already debayered. i think you can debayer a debayered image, does not make sense but does not generate an error either.

[Cleon_Wells]

I think i'm doing everything correctly, but my MasterDark is not correct when I integrate the dark calibrated subs with Pixel Rejection set to WSigma and No Normalization. I've attached a screen shoot of the Processing Console that shows good Dark scaling factors, the MasterDark used was created/integrated  with calibrated dark subs but without Pixel Rejection.
Cleon

[pfile]

well, this is out of range of my experience. i've never tried to calibrate my dark subs. i just integrate them as-is and let ImageCalibration subtract the master bias from the master dark before it scales the dark.

does that flow fail for you?

[Cleon_Wells]

If I BatchFormatConvert the CR2 Dark subs to .fit files and integrate a MasterDark, everything works as Vicent instruction on DSLR Calibration lays out.

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=2570.msg19019#msg19019

I think my problem with the calibrated dark subs is pointed out by Vicent.

Bias subtraction - occasionally, bias subtraction, while calibrating dark frames, produces negative numbers, if the Output Pedestal is not set correctly for the particular image set. The pedestal default value is "0", however, when dark scaling is unusually high and processing time is unusually long, the "Output Pedestal" should be increased.

I've attached a screen shoot of two Bubble images, one with the MasterDark used in light sub Calibration and one without the MasterDark used in light sub Calibration.
I assume that the lack of difference is caused by the very noisy light frames, Moon and Chicago suburbs...
Cleon