Hi there,
First, let me introduce myself: I’m Esther and I’m new here. I have recently started using a proper mount (ieq45 pro) for astrophotography after playing with a star adventurer for years and I’m using a raspberry pi 4 with Ubuntu for telescope/camera control. I have a few questions, I’m sorry if they’ve been asked a gazillion times before, or can be found easily in the manual. I did search but to no avail.

I'm using a Canon EOS 60D with an Intes mk67 on an ioptron ieq45 pro with a finderscope + a ZWO ASI 120MC-S for guiding.

• The minimum exposure time for bias frames is still a lot higher than what my camera can do. Is there a way to make Ekos take shorter subs?
• Sometimes when I take calibration frames, they end up on the camera SD card, and sometimes they don’t and I have to scp them to my laptop. It’s not a super big deal but I’d like to understand why this is and how I can prevent it.
• I keep running into image orientation issues. Last night, I took lights and flats on my mount, and this morning I did the darks while the telescope was laying horizontally and Pixinsight refuses to stack them saying that the image dimensions don't match. (DSS has no problems but I’d rather use PI). The thing is that the camera settings say that auto rotate is off. Is there a setting for this in Ekos that I’m somehow missing?
• I use PhD2 for guiding and dithering, it says dithering is on but I’m still seeing ‘walking noise’ in my images. Is there something I need to do in Ekos to make it dither?

Thanks in advance for the help

Hoi Esther,

Welcome to the forum. It has been a while since I imaged with a DSLR so I cannot answer all your questions but I'll give it a shot. Hopefully others will chime in.

• Open the INDI Configuration panel, which is the popup you get when you connect your devices and start INDI. Go to the tab of your camera and search for the "Force Bulb" option. Disable that to access shorter exposure times. You can open the INDI Configuration panel on the first tab in Ekos by clicking the third button from the left under Start & Stop Ekos
• Define "sometimes". Does this happen during the same imaging session or in different sessions? Again, in the INDI Configuration panel check the Options tab of your DSLR camera and play with the "Upload" setting and in the camera tab of Ekos itself with the Save (locally, remote, both) setting.
• Does PI accept your images if you rotate them? Canon EOS Utility can help you bulk rotate your CR2 files.

Groetjes, Wouter

Hey Wouter!
Thanks for the reply. I tried the first fix just now but it still won't allow exposure times below 0.001.

The "sometimes" is one out of two or something? I think both the rotation and the saving problems are often with calibration images taken the next day after I had shut down the pi and the camera for the night, but it's hard to be 100% sure since I've been seeing these problems on and off for the past few months and there are big gaps between imaging sessions.

Rotating the images works for PI but is a hassle. Meanwhile, I've found a setting that may help: Under "capturesettings" of the camera in the INDI control panel there's an option "picturestyle" which was set to "standard" and I now set to Landscape. This sounds like it could fix the rotation problem at least.
I also found an option in the camera settings that might be the key to the saving issue: Under "settings" there's a setting "capturetarget" that has options "Internal RAM" and "Memory Card". It was not set at all, I now changed it to "Memory Card", let's see what happens.

Hey Esther,

Good to see that you are making at least some progress. With regard to taking BIAS images, i don't know the EOS 60D at all. Does it have an M and a B setting or only M? Like I said, I haven't used my DSLR camera with Ekos now for a loooong time, sorry.

And I am looking into using PHD2 as well as an experiment with my 8" RC so let me know if you ever find out how to make dithering work Either here or by email (you should still have my email address).


Clear skies, Wouter

Hello, I have a small question for you two. As far as I understood you two are into astrography so does my sister. She is very new to it, but soon it's gonna be her birthday, and I really wanna make a good present this year. I'm thinking about the telescope. So, my question is, can you recommend me one of these ? or should I check on something else?
Thank you!