From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: October 1, 2009 11:00:38 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] NOS Pt Grey cameras on ebay


That`s cool Tim. I notice there`s no international shipping available even if I could afford one.


Mark.

On 02/10/2009, at 2:43 AM, doobisary wrote:

Hi all:

This week, I purchased a new old stock Pt Grey Scorpion 1600x1200 monochrome camera on ebay for under $300, including CA sales tax. I ordered it "buy it now" on Monday afternoon, and it showed up in the mail yesterday! Exactly as described in the ad, all the Point Grey seals in place. QA inspection stickers and packing date from Pt Grey from July, 2007.

I already had an extra cmount to 1.25" adapter I wasn't using, so I put that on the camera, found a 6' firewire cable I also had laying around (will need to add another 5 meter cable, though) and took it out and tried it out on my 6" f/10 Newt with a 2.5x Televue. Boy, that's a cool camera! In full frame mode, it's even easier to center objects than it is with my flea2 (1032x776). I was shooting without any filters, just the IR blocker in the camera, so atmospheric refraction was an issue (smear). It's quite a bit more sensitive than my color flea2 (perhaps not surprisingly). I can shoot with a 640x480 ROI at 16.67ms/frame, 60 fps, and still have enough light through the 6" for decent signal. The seeing was awful, and yet I got a decent image out of a couple of videos I tried before calling it quits for the evening.

If others are interested, this is a great deal, and the seller (an electronic components retailer) has one more 1600x1200 and two 1360x1024 Scorpions for sale. All NOS, unopened, but without cables or Flycapture software or firewire card (which I haven't used from my flea and flea2 purchases, since I'm using Astro IIDC).

Here's the link to one of the ads: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300350362241&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I'll post one of the Jupiters I shot last night with the camera...

-Tim.