Predefined exposures (non-BULB) to avoid Sony A7S star-eating problem

[jurgenfd]

Hi guys,

Many good affordable common Sony camera's (like my A7S) have a problem where the data gets filtered in-camera, eating up many tiny wanna-be stars. This only occurs in BULB mode. In manual mode this problem is absent. It's well-documented and in fact in the last four years about 10,000 signed this petition for Sony to address it (www.change.org/p/sony-remove-the-star-ea...-i-ii-and-a9-cameras) but it didn't happen.

I assume Sony will never fix it. It would be real nice if KStars could use the manual (M) mode instead of the BULB mode. Currently it is advised against it here: indilib.org/ccds/gphoto.html (section Exposure Modes). Indeed when I test with M mode and Ekos it behaves badly. Could somebody fix this? I would love to file the bug report, help test and debug. Unfortunately I don't develop in C myself.

I have tested with another program called AstroDSLR which shares some code with KStars. AstroDSLR is capable to use the M mode so I'm hoping KStars will do too.

Cheers,
Jurgen

I attach two pictures; without and with star-eating BULB modus. They open up nicely with e.g. PhotoShop. Can you tell them apart? ;-) I'll post the answer in a bit.
DSC00154.ARW.zip

DSC00155.ARW.zip

[jurgenfd]

Hi @knro,

Could you briefly annotate the closing of this issue. I thought it was a rather nice proposal ;-)
I believe quite a few people are still affected by this issue. Maybe it's too hard to solve?

Cheers,
Jurgen