Flats Calibration Wizard flat panel adjustments

Could some way to adjust the flat panel brightness be added to Flats Calibration Wizard?
Manual would be a good start, but also a way for SGP to automatically adjust the brightness instead of the exposure time would be great

You can do this currently with the flatbox module =>
image

I agree that it would be more intuitive it the control existed in the flats wizard window though.

Yes, constant time and varying brightness is currently in our backlog.

Actually disregard that last. I misunderstood what you were asking and it has now occurred to me that, manual control, although possible, will not work in the way I suggested. That value will be overridden by the filter’s default brightness value every time. That said, it was fairly straightforward to add an actual manual override for brightness. You’ll be able to force the cal wizard to set and use the current brightness to populate the filter’s flats data values. Unchecking the box will run the calibration as normal. An improvement may be to somehow provide a manual brightness override per binning or ISO, but that’s far more complex and the UI for it would be pretty gross (maybe?).

I set my Flat Panel brightness in Tools: Equipment Profile Manager (pick the profile you will use): Filters: Set Filters: Flats

That way when the Calibration Wizard runs it will adjust the time but use the ‘brightness’ of the panel that I had set beforehand for any particular filter. (e.g. on my set up maybe 50 for Lum Filter but 255 for SII filter).

Thus it will calibrate the time required but hold the flat panel brightness as you have set it.

A bit rough maybe but over time you can, with experience, adjust things somewhat better to suit the exposure times you need, especially if your camera has a shutter.

Hope the above makes sense.

I was just about to comment that it wouldn’t work from the flat module since the value is overriden…but you already knew that so great :+1:

What you have added in the image will be perfect as a start, next step would be automatically increase or decrease the brightness to reach an optimal exposure time, i believe this be great for people using darks flats so they could use the same time for all flat darks instead of having to match them per filter.
It would also save a lot of time finding the brightness/time value for NB filters :slight_smile:

I was just shooting flats with my new 12"f/4 and since I have a ATIK 343L+ with a mechanical shutter, I prefer to adjust the panel brightness. So I was thinking it would be great to have the ability in SGP…low and behold this topic was in my email. Look forward to this functionality with the wizard to be able to adjust the panel brightness with a fixed exposure.

It needs some additional testing, but I hope to have it out in beta 744 today.

Great!
It’s supposed to be cloudy so perfect time to test and take flats :smiley:

I tested the new feature and can confirm it works for what i need.
Now lets the automatic brightness adjustment won’t take too long either :smiley:

I dont think it will take too long, but that particular change carries a risk of destabilizing SGPro so it’ll not be in 4.1.