As ProfJohn announced in his recent blog post, The Imaging Source astronomy cameras have appeared in a very complimentary review, published in the October 2007 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine.

Sean Walker took the astronomy camera DMK 21AF04.AS and the camera control software IC Capture.AS through their paces and has written a very detailed text on his research.

In this blog post, I would like to build on ProfJohn's recent entry, quoting some more from Sean's review.

Sean talks in detail about IC Capture.AS:

One key to the excellent performance of the DMK 21AF04.AS is the control software, IC Capture.AS, included with the camera. This program is well designed and intuitive. [...]

Everything you need to record a high-quality video stream is directly at hand when you launch the program. Controls for exposure time, gain (sensitivity), and frame rate are clearly labeled and conveniently located on the toolbar across the top of the computer screen. [...]

One excellent feature of IC Capture.AS is its ability to crop the image frame with the ROI (Region of Interest) tab and thus avoid recording massive areas of black space around the planets.

We fully agree with the points that Sean raises. Only with a piece of stable, highly usable and mature software is it possible to acquire sequences of data that can be processed in to good looking images. We have spent many man hours developing IC Capture.AS to address the needs of amateur astronomers.

In the latter part of his review, Sean turns his attention to the cameras its self:

[...] the DMK camera performed like a champ. Its Sony CCD chip is sensitive from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, with a peak response at roughly 510 nanometers in the green. This wide spectral range is excellent for imaging planets. [...]

After several weeks with the DMK camera, I feel that it offers the best performance-to-price ratio available today for planetary imagers. It produces images almost as good as those from cameras costing more than twice the price.

Here at The Imaging Source, we are very happy with Sean's review and would like to thank him for taking the time to write and have published such a detailed text. As ProfJohn mentioned in his blog post, we wholeheartedly recommend that you go to your local newsstand and buy the current issue of Sky and Telescope. The cover to look for is the on at the top right of this blog post