Focus problems, BEOs 3.2.2, Canon 60D

[Abrahahamdau]

Hi just installed software (v.3.2.2), and using one of my Canon lenses..on Canon 60D
On the screen i can get focus perfect on live view.
When i snap an image, and it downloads from the camera, it is not in focus.
Also the software seems to drop the resolution..
How can i fix this?

[admin]

You need to set the lens to Manual Focus (MF).

The software does not drop resolution, the image it downloads it the exact image in the camera, unaltered.  Please explain why you claim this.

[astroman133]

Is the lens in AutoFocus (AF) mode? If so, it will try to refocus before each image. Try focusing in LiveView and putting the lens in ManualFocus (MF) mode and tape the lens to keep it from shifting.

I am not sure what you mean by "the software seems to drop the resolution". In Imaging mode, with RAW Image Quality, the full image should be downloaded and stored on the computer's hard drive.

[Abrahahamdau]

Initially I use the lens in autofocus so the the software can drive the focus motors, when in focus I then switch to manual focus before snapping the image.

My 60D is set up to the highest resolution RAW and L, but when I click the "Planetary" or the "Frame & Focus", the software switches the settings in the camera to S1. Why?

[s3igell]

LiveView, as used for Frame&Focus and Planetary Imaging is an "artificial" image derived from a datastream that BYE receives from the Camera through the CANON SDK.  It is essentially the 5x Zoom Image displayed on the Rear Viewscreen.  Depending on the DSLR Model, it is a resolution between 720x480 and 1028x768.  BYE receives this data through the SDK and writes a JPG to the PC, while for all other Snapshot and Capture Images BYE uses the SDK to command the DSLR to take the Image and then reads the finished image through the SDK to the PC.

[admin]

13 hours ago, Abrahahamdau said:

Initially I use the lens in autofocus so the the software can drive the focus motors, when in focus I then switch to manual focus before snapping the image.

My 60D is set up to the highest resolution RAW and L, but when I click the "Planetary" or the "Frame & Focus", the software switches the settings in the camera to S1. Why?

When in planetary and liveview, your main objective is to use liveview, not take images. And for this reason, the image is set to small jpeg to speed things up if you snap images. This is by design and has been like this for 10 years.

[astroman133]

When you switch from Planetery or Frame & Focus to imaging and then take an image BYE will use whatever resolution you have selected, for example RAW+L for the images. When you see S1 in the Camera Information Center this is what is currently set in the camera from when you were in LiveView mode. It will change once you start capturing an image.

[Abrahahamdau]

Ok got it, thanks. (Today went through most of the tutorial (old version of software, google meets)...
One question, in the tutorial/google meet it shows in planetary mode how the image changes in the live view mode (Planetary), with the f-stop settings and shutter speed .. and that one should almost always be in 5X.
However i have tried in every way i know, to get this, but the live image on BYE does not change, and when i record an image(s) the resolution that i get in planetary mode is always much lower than frame & Focus.
I know for the best resolution i should just do the imaging mode, but when i am with students etc, i'd like to be able to show them (in planetary 5X mode) a live view, and record a sequence etc but with the camera native resolution..whatever i have set it to be. But i am not getting that...
Is there a setting i am missing?

 

[astroman133]

>> However i have tried in every way i know, to get this, but the live image on BYE does not change.

Can you provide more information about the steps that you execute, what you expect to change and what you see?

For example, did you enable Exposure Simulation in the camera's menus?

The 60D is an older camera and in general behaves differently from other models that Canon released. Specifically, the LiveView frame rate that is used by BYE's Planetary Mode is slower than other camera models AND some owners of the 60D suffered from the camera suddenly dying. I mean that one minute the camera worked normally and the next it became an expensive paper weight. For a while Canon repaired them at no cost to the owner, but I do not believe that they still do that.

My T5i does not have an Exposure Simulation setting that needs to be enabled. Out of the box it supports adjusting the brightness of the LiveView image (either on the camera's LCD display or on the Frame & Focus screen). I can change the Shutter, Aperture, and ISO and they all affect the brightness of the displayed image....up to a point. By that I mean that if I increase the Shutter to longer than 2 seconds or if I increase the ISO above 3200 the image does not get brighter, but if I shorten it from 2 seconds to 1 second or lower the ISO the image immediately gets darker.

I would suggest ensuring that Exposure Simulation is enabled and setting your camera up at the kitchen table with a stock EF lens and plug it into your laptop. Put the camera in Manual shooting mode. Connect BYE to the camera and go into Frame and Focus. In the bottom right part of the F&F screen set the Shutter dropdown control to 1 second, the Aperture to some mid-range value, and the ISO to 800. Did any of that affect the brightness of the LiveView display in BYE? Change the Shutter to a smaller value and you should see the image darken. Change the ISO to a higher value and you should see the image brighten.

 If none of that appeared to change the brightness then one more thing that you could try is to pause LiveView while changing the settings and then resuming LiveView. I do not need to do this with my T5i, but as I said, the 60D is an older camera.

I hope this helps.

[admin]

The 60D has a 'B' dial mode for BULB.  You need to turn the dial to 'M' with in live view (both frame&focus and planetary).  This is because Canon's exposure simulation will only work when the dial is set to 'M'.  This is probably the root cause why your image is over exposed (when you say resolution is less)

[Abrahahamdau]

I have tried both B and M.... same results.

[Abrahahamdau]

Astroman133: I enabled Exposure Simulation on the camera. 
And now I do see the image on live view change when I change settings f-stop etc.
Thanks for the tip.. that helped quite a bit.

But I still get low-res images stored in the computer in Planetary mode.
I guess there is no way to fix that?
Like i said before, In plain Frame & Focus I get decent resolution (whatever is native on the camera)
But not so in planetary mode. Seems to fall back to a low-res image to store in the comp...

 

[astroman133]

Frame & Focus and Planetary mode both use LiveView so both give exactly the same view.

The camera's sensor is larger than the LCD display on the camera and the camera's processor has to downsample the image to make it fit on the LCD. This is the same image that is available to download to BYE for F&F and Planetary modes. In both modes when you zoom to 5X, you are seeing part of the full image, but it is at the full resolution of the camera so 1 pixel in the LiveView image equals 1 pixel on the sensor. When switching between F&F and Planetary you may have to re-enable 5X zoom to get the full resolution.

[admin]

You need to stop that claim about low resolution when in liveview, it makes no sense and is irrelevant. You need to understand that a live view image comes in a fixed size from the camera, it cannot be changed, period.

Select 5x and you get the best resolution your camera can provide in a live view frame.

 

 

[Abrahahamdau]

Thanks for your irrelevant repply. you did not get my point...not claiming anything...
Trying to make it easy for my students here to do both at the same time...
Thanks again for nothing.

[astroman133]

I think that admin is worried that your comments that BYE is providing low-res images will deter prospective customers from purchasing their software. I reality BYE is providing the images in as high a resolution as is available from the camera and not a result of BYE artificially lowering the resolution for some arbitrary reason.

[Abrahahamdau]

Astroman133, the software is great overall and well worth the $50 for the premiun version...for more reasons than one.

But I have students from 9-18 yrs old, and I try and make it as easy as possible for them, in group sessions, to see what is going on, and at the same time, learn some new things..

And somethings some of those things are not what the software was intended for..
Like teaching them about f-stops, depth of field, shutter speed, resolution etc in general photography. And I find BYE great for that bec they can see on a large screen the immediate effect in live view (planetary mode)...of most of that.

It is a bit more abstract to show them (in group sessions) in Image mode, as the process is a bit more complex and "hidden" from live screen view...

Thanks for all your responses...

 

[astroman133]

The concepts of digital photography will be difficult to explain with LiveView because the shutter speed doe not actually change how long photons are collected; it is used to simulate the effect of increasing the time that the shutter is open while maintaining the fastest frame rate that the camera and computer can provide. The resolution is also lower because the LCD screen is only 20% of the size of the full sensor.

Also, collecting RAW images will be difficult because they are not autobrightened by the camera's software before being downloaded. They still have a linear gamma so seem underexposed when displayed. They need to be stretched with a non-linear manner to bring out dim details from astronomical targets. Other operations like bad pixel removal, noise reduction, color balance adjustment, sharpening, saturation, smoothing, cropping, etc. all need to be performed to provide a viewable final image. These steps are complicated, subjective, and vary for each set of images to be processed. This is difficult for a beginner to grasp, especially for children.

My astronomy club tried to teach kids at a school photography club how to do Planetary photograph processing where we provided an AVI file of Jupiter. We had to give up because the school's computers were too locked down to let us install the software that we needed to use and the IT people would not let the software be installed.

If you are not trying to teach astrophotography to the kids then I apologize. I would then suggest that you could use Canon's EOS Utility instead of BYE. It doesn't have the features that BYE does, but it is also not geared toward astrophotography. The EOS Utility also uses the Canon SDK, so has the same camera control capabilities as BYE does, but does not have Planetary mode or Drift Alignment mode or filter wheel, telescope, or focuser control.