Still looking for ASI 071 MC Gain settings info

stargazr66207

Hope that some of you 071 owners (or even the Moderator) can get back to me with recommendations on the best gain

settings to use for the 071MC camera.

Ron Abbott

Support@ZWO

Hi Ron,

Sorry for my late response. In the previous post that I have replied to you, I'd like to use Unit Gain for DSO image. If other ASI071MC Pro owners have different suggestions, we are welcome to discuss in this post.

rob

Hi Ron
i have the 071 but I’m fairly new to astrophotographers but I seam to recall reading somewhere that the unity gain for 071 is 90
so I have used that gain setting for deep sky objects
As I said I am relatively new to this myself and do not fully understand what unity gain is I have assumed that it is the optimum setting for the chip in the camera .
I hope that my reply is of some help to you and wish you all the best with your imaging
regards
rob

denny64

Hi Ron,
That a tuff question to answer. Some of its on preference. Plus I didn't see if you said if you were using live stack.

First off, I shoot subs and process them later. I DONT use live stack in Sharpcap.
I started out using the unity gain that is 92 in my case. Not sure that is standard. The problem with that was if I processed using Deep Sky Stacker there were never enough stars in my subs for it to stack. Since then I've experimented using 250, 300, and 350. 350 at 3 minutes is the exposures I usually use now days unless there are really bright stars in the image.
I also use the opolong L-enhanced filter for doing emission nebulas where I need the extra light and bump the time up to 5 minutes.
Check out Dr. Robin Glover on youtube ... Deep Sky CMOS imaging. It's a little deep but he shows the graphs on gain vs time. I wished it was for the 071 but it's not but it will give some insite on shooting with a CMOS camera.

Good luck
Denny

astrodet

Hi Ron,
Unity Gain means only that 1 Photon raises the readout level of the target cell on the sensor by 1 unit on the natural 14bit-scale. This is multplied by the firmware by 4. This setting is sufficent, if you take frames on deep sky objects without small band filters.
I use the setting "gain 240 - offset 65" (= lowest read noise) when the signal of the object is very low. The readouts at that setting are boostet by the factor 5 compared to unity gain.
You get nearly the same image quality on diim objects with both settings if the total exposure time of your frames is the same.

Good luck
Detlef

cschur

Hello Ron, comparing my ASI071MC to our Hutech modified DSLR, I can tell you that setting a gain of 0 will yeild an approximate ISO of 100. Setting to 90 is preferred, which yields ISO350. This is where I use it with an offset of 20. I have used it both straight and with an Optolong L-Enhance pro dual band filter at this setting and am getting killer results in moderate and dark sky conditions. Initially until you do a great deal of experimentation over the years, start with this gain and offset - 90 gain 20 offset.