From: "Tim" <tjp314@pacbell.net>

Date: May 22, 2006 2:18:40 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Re The Lumenera Review

Yep!

I forgot about the bit depth difference!  

I've been so impressed with my color Flea that I'm pretty sure I'm

going to order the B&W Scorpion soon.  I might even go crazy and get

one of the 1600x1200 color Scorpions to experiment with deep sky

imaging, but that's going to be down the road a bit.

Well, I'm still here at work, and need to take some time off this week

to get ready for RTMC, where I will have my Flea and other cameras all

set up on my Tak NJP mount with a few scopes...

The rain's supposed to have cleared out by lunch, but it's still

raining.  So far it looks good for the weekend, though.

-Tim.

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Milton Aupperle <milton@...> wrote:

Hi Tim;

What I found interesting was they never mentioned 8 / 16 bit (the  

lumenera is a 10 bit camera), but maybe that isn't possible with  

Streampix  or perhaps it's a limitation with the Window Stream Class  

Driver. Also it got great reviews but clearly the author was  

struggling to capture any "high speed" video with it out of the box  

and he needed a really high performance laptop (2.6 gighz and a 7200  

rpm drive) to achieve that.

As to any comparison on the Mac showing up in S&T...

Unfortunately the only guy at S&T that was Mac friendly was moved to  

one of their sister publications, so the odds of getting any coverage  

for Mac (or Linux) products are about zero. I made announcements in  

the past to S&T and got no where since he "switched". I'll keep  

trying but I expect nothing for my efforts.

If S&T don't have Mac hardware, then there is very little one can do  

about it for a review. And Apple simply isn't going to help out with  

a loner laptop nor do they care about "Niche Markets" outside of  

Music or TV Video. Apple is probably too occupied with trying to find  

ways to reduce the heat of their core duo hot plates .. umm I mean  

MacBooks (gee didn't Steve show a graph about how les spower hungry  

x86 was than PowerPC??)

Interesting article at The Register today on a low power (7 watts  

versus 20+ watts x86) dual core PowerPC processor that Apple was  

looking at right before the Intel announcement - which would have  

saved all the developers tons of time and effort, as wel as you guys  

money in buying new software. It also would have kept the Classic  

people still in the game too.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/19/pasemi_apple/

But that's all water under the bridge - Apple's an x86 follower now.

TTYL..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@...

www.outcastsoft.com

On 22-May-06, at 10:49 AM, Tim wrote:

Re, the Lumenera camera:

I read the review in S&T, and was disappointed that nothing was said

about the sensitivity of the ccd (or which chip is used), or the range

of exposures available.

I would sure love to see a review of one of the Pt Grey cameras -

particularly the Scorpion B&W, with it's 9.9 micron pixels) and Astro

IIDC software, which is still less expensive than the Lumenera with

the Streampix software.  For the PC folks, it would be interesting to

see how the bundled software performs when taking astro images.  I

haven't used the software that came with my Flea, though, because

Astro IIDC does all I need.  But I suppose I could look at it.

-Tim.