UPDATE FROM MABULA
I have had a very rough 2 months unfortunately health wise. I was struck 3x in a row with bacterial infections. The second infection occurred after a routine hospital checkup and I became very sick. I had to rest and take a lot of antibiotics. Once I was recovering and restarting work 1 month ago, I again became sick. The infection was not yet gone, so even more antibiotics and rest was needed. Needless to say, it took a lot of my energy and I needed a lot of rest.
Finally, the infection is really gone and my energy is coming back step-by-step now and I have started work again. I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting for support. I will address all outstanding questions and e-mails step-by step and will be on the forum daily from today.
APP 2.0.0-beta47 will come soon as well, a lot of work was already completed before I became very ill, so the release is also nearly ready for you. Beta47 will be much faster actually. Many workflows will be more than 2x faster, mosaics can even be 10x faster than before because registration really received a major boost... all compared to beta46. Before I release it, I will make sure that everything is working properly and then I will release it.
Started my 30 day trail for APP recently and so I've been playing around with a bunch of different features. One feature I like in particular is the Bad Pixel Map. Thinking through the process though is there any reason that the camera needs to be attached to its optics? I tried just using a white computer screen and placed my DSLR up against the screen to capture the flats. Seems like the generated bad pixel map is working, but I was just curious if there's something I'm missing as to why taking the flats (for the purpose of a bad pixel map) would need the optics since its just looking for hot and cold pixels.
Side question, about how long of an exposure would you recommend for dark frames? Tried 30s and it seems okay but not apposed to making a new make using longer exposures.
Thanks!
Hi Blair
Your darks must be the same iso, time(seconds - minutes), temperature, as the lights. At least you can do these while packing up your gear for the night.
Flats are to see dust bunnies, vignetting and other imperfections in the complete optical train. Must be done at same focus as lights right after imaging and before darks especialy on a DSLR as you might move the focus accidentaly when you cover the lens for the darks.
https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/how-to-create-a-bad-pixel-map-bpm-by-sara-wager/
Regards
teve
@solo05 Thanks for the response. Yes for calibrating my lights I'm aware the darks need to have the same settings and for flats to calibrate lights they of course need to be with the same optics, focus, etc.
I'm specifically interested for only generating a Bad Pixel Map, not in calibrating Lights. If you're only trying to find the bad pixels why would the optics matter?
It wouldn’t indeed. Unless you have cold pixels, those show up in flats, but modern sensors don’t seem to have those a lot anymore. So purely for the BPM you can use a long dark (longer is noisier and better for that).
