Webcam info please

I’ve been looking at camera options for about two years now. I want to learn the basics and realize a webcam is a good place to start.

So reading as much as I could I see that Toucams are used by many folks. I’ve read up on the mods for them with respect to long exposure and changing the CCD chip to the Sony ICX098BL black and white chip.

I then looked at the DMK offering that some are using and see the camera also uses the ICX098BL chip. Comments from Alan Friedman would be especially appreciated on this post.

First, I want a cheap camera using this chip. I want to play with the guts and intend on breaking a few of them with cooling. I’m not adverse to buying the Toucam and changing the chip, but the chips themselves appear hard to find off the shelf.

So with this said, anyone have any experience with this item>

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC.htm

Only 30fps, but would something like this work? I like the fact it’s OEM out of the box and not too expensive. Thanks, Joe

PS, I especially like this part,

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC_remoteCCD.htm

Hi Joe

Joe Conway said:

I?ve been looking at camera options for about two years now.

Don't wait any longer!! The B&W DMK21... would have cost 65 cents a day over the last two years.

[I]
So reading as much as I could I see that Toucams are used by many folks. I?ve read up on the mods for them with respect to long exposure and changing the CCD chip to the Sony ICX098BL black and white chip. I then looked at the DMK offering that some are using and see the camera also uses the ICX098BL chip. Comments from Alan Friedman would be especially appreciated on this post.
First, I want a cheap camera using this chip. I want to play with the guts and intend on breaking a few of them with cooling. I?m not adverse to buying the Toucam and changing the chip, but the chips themselves appear hard to find off the shelf.
So with this said, anyone have any experience with this item>
http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC.htm

I own four cameras - the venerable ToUcam, a Unibrain based B&W board that I assembled into a camera using an altoids box, a Unibrain industrial color camera and the DMK 21BF04. I have not used any of the others since first light with the DMK - it is optimized for noise suppression better than the others and produces a much cleaner image when gain is applied. The Unibrain uses the same chip, I believe, but suffers from an internal noise pattern that is a big problem at low signal levels - I don't believe that this camera has been improved to deal with this shortcoming. The ToUcam is a great value and if you are a tinkerer perhaps that would be a good way to go. It won't take long to recognize the benefits of a monochrome camera and selective imaging with color filters as opposed to white light.

my .02 -
Alan

Joe,

the Fire-I BW board looks good at first glance but has a number of issues. Integration times are 1/30s or shorter - too dim for small and average scope apertures, especially for dimmer objects like Saturn. There's an easy hardware mod that disables shutter control and couples integration times directly to the framerate - 1/30s, 1/15s...
I documented the mod of my board here:
http://www.astro-imaging.de/astro/fire-i_mono.html
Unfortunately my cam died shortly after the mod, some others did, too. Maybe this is related to the modification, maybe not, the cams had some other problems, see item 21 here:
http://www.unibrain.com/support/FAQ_Fire-i_DC.htm
Another issue is a bug in the TI chipset, the effective output is 7bits only. IIRC there are some other flaws like bayered transfer even with the b/w sensor under Linux/Coriander, this issue doesn't exists with the windows drivers, though.
Having used a Fire-I BW board (shortly) I cannot really recommend it.

I can only second Alan's comments, the DMKs are great cameras, not cheap but worth every penny and they come with a nice capture software, at least for Windoze.

Hope this & helps & best wishes,
Oliver

Hi Joe,

The DMK21AF04 is definitely a winner. I own one myself, although my success with it has been limited due to lack of time. However, when I find the time, it has proven successful several times. The noise level is indeed low, as Alan pointed out. Lower than at least one well known camera at 4x higher cost.

I initially started off with a Toucam Pro 740 and then 840. I also had the b&w version of the Toucam. IMO, the b&w version is the way to go if you want to save up for the DMK later. Many of my best images came from the b&w version using color filters. There is a noise reduction software modification that helps to greatly reduce noise over the standard configuration.

Don't forget that, no matter what, seeing will be the ultimate factor in image quality. No camera or software can totally compensate for poor seeing, although software, such as Registax 4 and IIDC, is getting closer all the time.

Good luck,
Eric

Joe Conway said:

I’ve been looking at camera options for about two years now. I want to learn the basics and realize a webcam is a good place to start.

So reading as much as I could I see that Toucams are used by many folks. I’ve read up on the mods for them with respect to long exposure and changing the CCD chip to the Sony ICX098BL black and white chip.

I then looked at the DMK offering that some are using and see the camera also uses the ICX098BL chip. Comments from Alan Friedman would be especially appreciated on this post.

First, I want a cheap camera using this chip. I want to play with the guts and intend on breaking a few of them with cooling. I’m not adverse to buying the Toucam and changing the chip, but the chips themselves appear hard to find off the shelf.

So with this said, anyone have any experience with this item>

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC.htm

Only 30fps, but would something like this work? I like the fact it’s OEM out of the box and not too expensive. Thanks, Joe

PS, I especially like this part,

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC_remoteCCD.htm

Joe, I used one of these fire-i mono cameras for about 18 months as my main camera, you can see some results in my image gallery. All the 2004 and 2005 images would have been taken with this camera.

It's certainly a low cost camera, but has a few quirks as Oliver and others have mentioned, I'd say you get exactly what you pay for - it's a good low-cost learning camera, but you'll soon want to replace it.

I've evaluated and owned many cameras in the couple of years since then, and one thing that seems consistent is that "you get what you pay for". The best camera you can buy (in my opinion) is the Dragonfly Express from Point Grey Research, and it's also the most expensive.

Other cameras like the DMK21AF04 from TheImagingSource and the Dragonfly2 from PGR are also good cameras, again their cost gives a good indication of what you can expect from them. The DMK is quite limited in its range of modes and formats, so it's the cheapest of the three.

If price is no limit then I don't see how you can do better than a Dragonfly Express at the moment.

regards, Anthony

Do cameras with monochrome chips perform better than color chips? If so, why?

Thanks
Andreas