New Android Image Acqusition App -- Deep Sky Camera

[JayTee]

Hello,

I just stumbled across this app yesterday. It provides a level of control over my smartphone's camera much more so than any other app. The longest exposure any app could give me on my Galaxy S20FE was 0.1467 seconds. This number, I thought, was a "hard-wired" feature. And apps like "Manual Camera" could not bypass this built-in restriction. Well not anymore, Deep Sky Camera allows my smartphone camera to acquire images as long as 30 seconds. It gives you all the controls you've come to expect from a DSLR camera image acquisition software title. I've only had one night to explore what this app can do and I will tell you that I'm duly impressed. These are the best night sky images my smartphone has ever taken! For full disclosure, the current version is a Beta version. The author is currently working on a pro version for release.

Here is an image of the control screen. It is elongated to show all the controls you have over the camera as you scroll to the left.

And here are some very quick single-frame images taken last night. The first image includes some of the backyard baby Christmas trees plus the north sky. 30 seconds, ISO 400. The aperture and the f/stop for the camera the app is controlling only has one choice, aperture 5.6mm, the f/stop is 1.8.

These next two are experimenting with the "zoom" feature which both allows you to "nail" your focus (which is controlled by the right-hand red slider in the above screenshot image plus it allows you to restrict your FOV for composition. You can digitally zoom the image to as much as 8x. These are zoomed to 2.28x. exp 15 seconds, ISO 800

I will continue to experiment and add to this post as the weather allows.

Here is the app website and Google play link for download.
https://www.deepskycamera.de/index.php
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... pskycamera

So far, I'm impressed.

Cheers,

[John Donne]

Nice app JT.

My new phone has a "night" mode that I want to use at the EP.

[Ylem]

I just installed it on my Android, I see it comes with a nice PDF manual, I will have to read that.

On that note, I just bought the 3 axis Celestron phone holder.

So all this looks promising to me

[JayTee]

Hi Jeff,

It would be nice if we could start posting the tips and tricks that we stumble across as we discover this app.

Here's number one, zooming the image only works when the file format is jpg.
Number two, use manual focus. Infinity and hyperfocal did not work well for me. My best focus setting for my phone was between -0.08 and -0.12.

More, as I figure it out.

[skysnapper]

Hi JayTee,

I've been playing with this app on and off - when I remember.

If anyone is a OnePlus owner then the cameras on these phones can capture some pleasing results, as can others.

The one I'm attaching here is from a OnePlus 7T, using the built-in camera app in Pro mode, saving as DNG raw, 60 subs of 30s each, riding on a Star Adventurer Pro, no additional hardware, and looking at the Milky Way. Stacked and pushed through Astrometry to add in the constellations.