Medium-Jim
n3wb
So upon joining I’ve already asked a lot of dumb stuff. I’ve also read cliff notes and wiki and taken it upon myself to read various articles about cameras, sensors and settings. I’m not saying I’ve retained/understand everything but I doing my best so...
According to this forum, MP is overhyped and your ideally looking for lower mega pixels for low light or very low lux situations. I’m looking for reasoning or clearification as to why as most of what Ive studied seems to disagree with this statement OR it’s highly possible or probable that I’m confused.
Anyways it seems that for example if I’m looking to record the night sky I’m looking for a very high MP camera with a large CMOS or CCD sensor with fast Frame rates and longer exposure times.
If a mega pixel=1 million pixels then I have more opportunity or areas to collect Photons. These photons are collected by the sensor and converted to a digital signal. More pixels = more values to Represent the light intensity from black to white. It seems that MP is correlated to bits. As the A/D converter changes the analog photon signal to digital in the CCD or CMOS then more bits also equals more values to represent light intensity ( bit depth ).
-Basically a set number of Photons, hitting a pixel during an exposure time, creates X number of electrons forming a charge, which is amplified, then converted to digital signal, which results in a grey value. It would seem that more pixels and more bits = better light collection when talking about Lux values under 1? what am I missing here?
as far as fast frame rates it would seem that each “sample” is more of an opportunity to collect said light. Also with longer exposure times the sensor allows more time to fill the pixel wells with photons. Now I understand that longer exposure times will negatively effect frame rates but IDEALLY you would want very fast frame rates and long exposure times....?
I am aware that motion blur or SNR goes up with long exposure times due to a variety of factors but is there a generally accepted preference? Ie frame rates over exposure times or vice versa?
I was told that I’m looking for a camera with a 1/1.8 sensor but wouldnt an even bigger sensor be even better? And wouldn’t I want the biggest lens I could get? I.e. 35mm? I don’t understand why a smaller lens gives a broader field of vision. If that’s true then I want like a 2mm lens? It seems counter intuitive?
finally would a software system such as blue iris play or be compatible with a movement tracking software like VISDAT, MetRec, or UFOCapture? I would think of these systems as the base program and something like blue iris as the UI?
thanks ahead of time!
According to this forum, MP is overhyped and your ideally looking for lower mega pixels for low light or very low lux situations. I’m looking for reasoning or clearification as to why as most of what Ive studied seems to disagree with this statement OR it’s highly possible or probable that I’m confused.
Anyways it seems that for example if I’m looking to record the night sky I’m looking for a very high MP camera with a large CMOS or CCD sensor with fast Frame rates and longer exposure times.
If a mega pixel=1 million pixels then I have more opportunity or areas to collect Photons. These photons are collected by the sensor and converted to a digital signal. More pixels = more values to Represent the light intensity from black to white. It seems that MP is correlated to bits. As the A/D converter changes the analog photon signal to digital in the CCD or CMOS then more bits also equals more values to represent light intensity ( bit depth ).
-Basically a set number of Photons, hitting a pixel during an exposure time, creates X number of electrons forming a charge, which is amplified, then converted to digital signal, which results in a grey value. It would seem that more pixels and more bits = better light collection when talking about Lux values under 1? what am I missing here?
as far as fast frame rates it would seem that each “sample” is more of an opportunity to collect said light. Also with longer exposure times the sensor allows more time to fill the pixel wells with photons. Now I understand that longer exposure times will negatively effect frame rates but IDEALLY you would want very fast frame rates and long exposure times....?
I am aware that motion blur or SNR goes up with long exposure times due to a variety of factors but is there a generally accepted preference? Ie frame rates over exposure times or vice versa?
I was told that I’m looking for a camera with a 1/1.8 sensor but wouldnt an even bigger sensor be even better? And wouldn’t I want the biggest lens I could get? I.e. 35mm? I don’t understand why a smaller lens gives a broader field of vision. If that’s true then I want like a 2mm lens? It seems counter intuitive?
finally would a software system such as blue iris play or be compatible with a movement tracking software like VISDAT, MetRec, or UFOCapture? I would think of these systems as the base program and something like blue iris as the UI?
thanks ahead of time!
