Dark/bias/flat question

Gadgetman

Still learning the ZWO 294MC Pro and ASIStudio. I noticed that the auto stacking feature has a window to select Darks, Bias and Flats to be used in the auto stacking. However, do you use a file that is a master of each or just one file of each? Oh, the auto stacking only lets you use one file of the Darks, Bias and Flats, thus the question on using a master of those in the auto stacking of the Lights. When I stack pictures in other programs, I generally stack several of each; Dark, Bias and Flat but sometimes too many of one makes the picture go black. I tried a master stack of say 5-Darks in the auto stack with the Lights and the auto stacking ended up black. Doing tonight some auto stacking using only one of each and seems to be doing okay. I do save each Light picture just to try and get better results in other programs. Oh, the program does not have a Flat Dark tab and I would like to make one.

johnpd

I have only used the ASIAIR and the phone/tablet app to create images. I would assume that the Studio acts somewhat the same way. In the app, if you are in "Live" Mode and you take darks, flats, bias frames, it creates a master for each to be applied to the live light image as it is being generated. You can save the individual light frames for further processing outside the ASIAIR. If you use the Autoruns option (ASIStudio seems to have the same feature in the ASIImg program), you can create multiple darks, flats, and BIAS frames to be used in stacking all files after the lights are created. You could use ASILive to create masters if you wish so you can use masters instead of individual files.

JohnD