Thus if you have computer during imaging and use your camera for daylight photography, the second option will be the best. Camera will return to normal once power cycled or metering system went asleep. Second option is to get my “ Dark Current Enable Tool”. And currently it is only for D5100 and D7000 as we don’t have time to dig into the assembly codes for other DSLR models. Gr and Gb pixels will not be at the same conversion gain. The drawback is camera will not use calibrated data. One, get the firmware patch called “True dark current”. Now 2 options are available to get sensor data without any pre-processing. Under a typical winter condition, dark current is so low and comparable to cooled CCDs. Dark current is also in the range of 0.15eps stablized under room temperature. The histogram also looks weird due to its X-axis is gamma corrected for JPEG preview.Īverage will now be brought back to around 600ADU, the setting for on sensor black level.Īs for image quality, Sony Exmor CMOS has far less readout noise and FPN compared to Canon. The DSP engine is still treating 0 as black point thus it’s pink on the screen.

Here’s the image straight out of the camera. Here’s a quick peak of the dark frame image. This is an exciting moment, for me as an amateur astronomer at least. It will also promise greater bias and dark calibration. Especially for people doing narrow band where background is very dark.

The last hurdle towards serious astro-imaging.

Today, we, the Nikon Hackers, are first able to extract the real, authentic RAW image from the Nikon D7000. Heads up Astrophotographers, Canon is no longer the best camera in terms of image quality in astrophotography.

Nikon d7000 firmware update