Starlight Xpress SXVF-H9 - Manual (Page 7)

Handbook for the SXVF-H9 Issue 1 May 2007
7
After the exposure and download have completed (about 4 seconds) an image of some
kind will appear on the computer monitor. It will probably be poorly focused and
incorrectly exposed, but any sort of image is better than none! In the case of the
pinhole, all that you can experiment with is the exposure time, but a camera lens can
be adjusted for good focus and so you might want to try this to judge the high image
quality that it is possible to achieve.
Various other exposure options are available, as can be seen in the picture above. For
example, you can ‘Bin’ the download 2x2, or more, to achieve greater sensitivity and
faster download, or enable ‘Continuous mode’ to see a steady stream of images.
‘Focus mode’ downloads a 128 x 128 segment of the image at high speed. The initial
position of the segment is central to the frame, but can be moved by selecting ‘Focus
frame centre’ in the ‘File’ menu and clicking the desired point with the mouse. The
focus window has an adjustable ‘contrast stretch’, controlled by the 12-16 bit slider.
The image will be ‘normal’ if 16 bits is selected, while setting lower values will
increase the image brightness in inverse proportion.
If you cannot record any kind of image, please check the following points:
1)
Ensure that the power indicator lamp is on and that the cables are properly home
in their sockets.
2) If the screen is completely white, the camera may be greatly overexposed. Try a
shorter exposure time, or stop down your lens. See if covering the lens causes the
image to darken.
3) If the USB did not initialise properly, the camera start-up screen will tell you that
the connection is defective. Try switching off the power supply and unplugging the
USB cable. Now turn the power supply on and plug in the USB cable. This will re-
load the USB software and may fix the problem after restarting the SXV_H9
program. Otherwise, check the device driver status, as previously described, and
re-install any drivers which appear to be defective.
4) If you cannot find any way of making the camera work, please try using it with
another computer. This will confirm that the camera is OK, or faulty, and you can