Four ASI2600MC Pro Cameras, SPCC is way off on only ONE

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leemaisel

Active member
I use SPCC for color calibration during processing, and I've noticed that ONE of my four ASI2600MC Pro cameras comes out heavy in the Yellow/Green AFTER SPCC. Is there something I'm overlooking regarding camera settings? I use the same SPCC settings for all four cameras, and only the one is giving me issues.
 
I may have found the fix, tonight's imaging will show it or not when I process tomorrow.

For some reason, all the other cameras White balance in the ASI software (I'm using NINA, so I don't normally see this) were set to Default 52/95
The one camera was set to 50/50
I changed it and the problem persisted. I rebooted, and restarted the camera and the change took apparently. I discovered this in compiling some sample images, I shot M5 from all telescopes and they looked the same colorwise, all had an initial greenish cast which is usually fixed by using SPCC. I couldn't use SPCC because I only shot one image from each camera. However, to the eye, and looking at the color in PS, they seem pretty much the same now. I'll let you know how it looks tomorrow.

Thank you!!
 
Well, No. That wasn’t it apparently.

Looking at the RGB spectrograph in PS, there’s almost no blue. I can stretch and manipulate the little there is, but it ends up looking really bad.

I wonder if I need to send this camera in for a swap. All the others have been fine.
 
N.Amer.jpeg

A very Pixellated version because any file I try, the forum says is too huge. Anyway, you get the gist, color is heavy in the yellow/green after all I’ve tried. The blue channel is a narrow line all the way to the left.
 
leemaisel said:
Could this possibly be caused by very deep blue sky Flats?
Click to expand...

Hello @leemaisel

Calibration can definitely be the problem. You need to look at the raw uncalibrated files to confirm that there is something wrong with this camera..
To help you further we really need the files (one raw image from each camera). You'll need to use a cloud service (googledrive, dropbox,...) and share a public link here.
 
Ok, tried with new flats, no difference.

Here's the link to the files, A3-XXX is a good camera
A5-XXX is the problematic one.

Color is set to 52/95 on both (ZWO default for this camera)

I've included stacked masters and also single FITS
I've also included a couple of .jpg from March that were made with the problematic camera before the problem started.

This is driving me nuts.

Thank you

PI_COLORCAL - Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com
 
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Your camera is not at fault here.The A5 fit file seems perfectly ok: its histogram is normal and and if you debayer it, the colors are ok.
Here is an exemple with an unlinked STF autostrectch:
Capture d'écran 2024-05-07 013501.jpg


However there is something wrong with the preprocessing of the A5 files and the A5 masterLight is indeed quite bad. I am not sure if it is a calibration or a debayering problem.
Can you share the log of the corresponding WBPP run and the masterdark and masterflat used in this run?
 
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Thank you!

Ok Log and MasterFlat added to the shared drive, Where are the Master Dark saved?

EDIT: after looking at the log, it's apparently caching one (I don't know why) and I have included it in the google Drive
 
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Oh, WOW, this is very strange.. It is referencing a MasterDark somewhere else!

[2024-05-06 21:12:59] [cache] - file is unmodified masterDark_BIN-1_6248x4176_EXPOSURE-300.00s.xisf [ cdd2133f12f4e67088254c333f384fc0292a78b1 ] - cached [2024-05-01T16:34:50.000Z] - current [2024-05-01T16:34:50.000Z]
[2024-05-06 21:12:59] ImageIntegration the cache is valid, skip the integration and use the cached result at path /Volumes/5TB2/042924/A5/A5 IC1318/master/masterDark_BIN-1_6248x4176_EXPOSURE-300.00s.xisf
[2024-05-06 21:12:59] /Volumes/5TB2/042924/A5/A5 IC1318/master/masterDark_BIN-1_6248x4176_EXPOSURE-300.00s.xisf
[2024-05-06 21:12:59] add the master file at path: /Volumes/5TB2/042924/A5/A5 IC1318/master/masterDark_BIN-1_6248x4176_EXPOSURE-300.00s.xisf
[2024-05-06 21:12:59] * Master dark: /Volumes/5TB2/042924/A5/A5 IC1318/master/masterDark_BIN-1_6248x4176_EXPOSURE-300.00s.xisf

Even though I am explicitly selecting ten darks in another folder altogether!

I RESET WBPP each time I use it, and this isn't happening with images from other scopes/cameras. How odd....

Why would it be choosing a MasterDark from somewhere else? I don't see evidence that it's doing it with the flats though..
 
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OK, I'm currently running everything again, after hitting the "CLEAR CACHE" button in WBPP. I wonder if there's an option to have it do that automatically?

We'll see what happens
 
Yes you should start fresh!
This masterdark is very wrong! You should reshoot your dark frames.
And I see in the log you don't have a masterbias nor a matching masterdark to calibrate your flats so you are calibrating them with the 300s masterdark. This is bad.

Your problem is definitively a calibration one
 
Thank You!!!!! Man, this was driving me crazy. I wonder why it wasn't doing it with any of the other image sets from three other cameras?

My workflow is:

Images from each telescope/camera go into their own folder.

I go through and manually delete/reject bad images.

I have a Calibration folder with subfolders for each camera, with subfolders for Darks and Flats.

I reset WBPP each time, and load up the corresponding flats and darks that match the specific camera and exposure time of the raw images.

I don't understand why, only on this particular camera/telescope it decided to use an old MasterDark that wasn't even in the path of the images I'm stacking. So strange!

Should I go ahead and make all new Darks for each exposure time? Since I now have good flats, how can I generate a good MasterDark for each exposure time (300, 180, 120, 60) and save them somewhere instead of using the raw darks every time?
 
leemaisel said:
Should I go ahead and make all new Darks for each exposure time? Since I now have good flats, how can I generate a good MasterDark for each exposure time (300, 180, 120, 60) and save them somewhere instead of using the raw darks every time?
Click to expand...

I dont know what files you have and if they are ok. But if you have doubt about them you should reshoot them. Make sure to prevent any light leak because it was not the case for the masterdark in the Google drive.

You can generate a masterdark easily with WBPP. Just input the individual darks (and nothing else) and click run.
 
THANK YOU!! Shooting them now!

I still don't understand Why WBPP was using an old cached version of the MasterDark, even though I explicitly chose my darks every session. Also, this behaviour was only happening on the ONE camera. very strange.
 
leemaisel said:
I still don't understand Why WBPP was using an old cached version of the MasterDark, even though I explicitly chose my darks every session. Also, this behaviour was only happening on the ONE camera. very strange.
Click to expand...
That I have no idea!

I'm curious: why do you have four 2600MC?
Do you use 4 scopes at the same time?
 
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