Increase Exposure before Gain

[MRiding-ANU]

Hi All,

Is there setting or method such that the exposure time is increased before the gain?
Currently, the gain goes to maximum before the exposure time increases by much.

For information, this camera is being used at an observatory, so it is most used to look at the clouds. Therefore, the max exposure is 10 seconds and max gain is 500.

Thanks.

[EricClaeys]

If you have an RPi camera with auto-exposure and auto-gain enabled, that's how it works.
If you have a ZWO camera you should set auto-exposure but manual gain.

[chvvkumar]

Interesting. My HQ camera seems to go for max exposure first and then varies the gain to hit the mean target.

My max values are 30000 for exposure (30s) and 16 for gain. I have both on Auto.

Timelapse

[MRiding-ANU]

It is a ZWO; however, I would still like to be able to adjust the gain otherwise the images are far too dim.

[EricClaeys]

@chvvkumar, that's how the RPi "auto" algorithm works.

@MRiding-ANU, in manual gain mode, you adjust the gain; Allsky doesn't. Make sure the "Max Gain" is at least as big as the "Gain".
FYI, our to-do list includes porting the RPi "auto" algorithm to ZWO, since it adjusts both exposure and gain, whereas the ZWO algorithm only adjusts exposure.

[MRiding-ANU]

Ok, thank you very much.