Brief Review of USB Astronomy Cameras by Marnix Praet

Blogged by Jonathan Maron on November 10, 2007 and tagged with Reviews, Moon.

Marnix Praet has send us the following review of one of our USB astronomy cameras. As Marnix's primary language is not English, I have taken the liberty of correcting some of his text. The corrections took place at a linguistic level and not a content level. The review has also been slightly shortened into a blog-sized post.

Marnix writes:

First Impression Of New DMK USB 2.0 Camera

I am very pleased with the concept of a USB DMK camera. I have tested it on the almost full moon at rates between 15 and 60 fps and I have not lost one single frame - fantastic!

The software works fine by me. No complains about that.

The camera offers some good features: a nice histogram settings panel, while you are taking AVI's. The noise reduction - a super feature for bad seeing conditions - great!

One small point: If you use noise reduction, you may see a raster on your image after processing with RegiStax.

The software is great. It works fine, without freezing and I have no bugs found for now.

The chip is a little on the small size, but its sensitivity is enormous.

I have taken some shots of the moon with my Meade apo and have tried out different filters, such as IR PRO, IR blocking, H-alpha.

This USB camera is a breakthrough for astrophotographers, who wish to capture the Moon and planets. It was a great experience and a pleasure to work with such a good camera (USB 2.0) and great software.

And a fantastic first night out.

Marnix Praet

-