A long awaited QSI 583 WSG dedicated astrophotography camera finally arrived. I am pleased to share the first impressions on this instrument.

Packaging and content
The camera arrived in a small Pellican Case.

The package includes:

1. Camera body
2. USB cable (standard, 3m)
3. AC power adapter with auxiliary 220V power cable in UK standard. Easy to replace to EU standard cable.
4. Excellent build camera cap
5. 2″ Nosepiece w/ t@ thread and T2 face plate adapter
6. home printed quick start guide and drivers CD

In my case I found also a couple of additional cables and a Starlight Xpress Lodestar guider.

First impression
Amazing! The camera build is excellent and it is visible at a glance. There are no plastic parts, all is solid and heavy.The quality of used materials and machining makes very good impression.

Software installation
Quick and trouble free. Camera and the filter wheel is visible as ‘QSI universal’ under Maxim DL. Simply select, connect and go!

Cooling and fans

Right after powering the camera up the instrument performs a quick self-test and turns the fans on. I have to admit they are quite noisy. Quick cooling test at 26°C ambient temperature allowed me to go down to -14°C in about 10 minutes. After reaching the desired temperature the cooling system adjust the power to the lowest necessary level. The fans work w/out a break.

The setup dialog window allows for 3 settings of fans:

- off (for liquid cooling)
- quiet
- full

The only disadvantage is that you can’t switch the cooling modes during the camera operation. You need to disconnect in order to access settings. I can’t see any difference between quite and full mode – the fans seem to operate with the same noise level and speed regardless of the setting.

Filter wheel
So far I can tell that it works quickly and silently. The filters installation requires that the camera body be opened. The filter wheel is well built, made of metal and the filters screw-in w/out any problems. The wheel is outlined with a rubber band and is friction driven using a small motor with friction-based gear. The position in this case must be recognized using an additional encoder.

Frame download time
Full frame download time is about 23 seconds. This is ridiculous, taking into account the state of the modern electronics. In binned mode the frame is downloaded a bit faster, but I couldn’t go down under 15s. Another disappointing thing is that sub frame download time is also not proportional to the frame size. It turns out that the sub frame download time is dependent on the sub frame location on the chip. You can get the quick download time for sub frames close to top-left corner, but 10x10px sub frame located in the bottom-right corner would download in 25 seconds – like a full frame. Focusing with this probably will be really time-consuming.

Bias
Nice and even curve, the values spread across 175 – 350 units. Visually the bias seems to be even, but the sides of the frame have a bit more noise.

Bias files – 5 frames (.zip 45MB)

Darks
Dark frames look quite OK. Noise level seems not to be high and distributed evenly across the frame. The following dark frames were taken at -10°C temperature.

Dark frames – 5 x 60s (.zip 45MB)
Dark frames – 600s & 1200s (.zip 17MB)

Vignetting
I was concerned about possible vignetting on faster optics around f/4 – f/5.  Quick test on Takahashi Sky 90 whows that the camera will go with such fast optics quite well.

QSI 583 & Takahashi Sky90 flat frame

First daytime light
The real “First light” will have to wait, but please let me share the daytime first light. Captured using Takahashi FS102 at 816mm and F/8, the object is in a distance of about 15m.

QSI 583 WSG Daylight first light test image

More detailed information will come shortly.
Stay tuned.