Caméra MEADE™ DSI-II

Read this page in french

We began to well know the "DSI" and her sister "DSI Pro". Their design became familiar, their great qualities ... and their minor defects ... nobody is perfect ...

And ... "once upon a time" .. it was a black swan ... Sorry, a blue DSI ...
Curiousely, when the DSI was revealed one year ago, because of the advertisments, we was certain that it was blue ... but no ! it was black ...

... and now ... so what is this trick ?

... and on the back side, how is it ?

Blue !

well, give me the magnifier ..

Ho ho, here we found something serious ...

Yep the chip grown, DSI enlarge his field of view getting a 1/2" CCD chip

By the way it change it's name and be called "DSI-II" et "DSI Pro II" now.

As a lucky "Béta tester" may I introduce you the color (DSI-II) model

Same scale ...

A larger chip ... is that all ? ...

Not at all.
In addition to being larger, this sensor presents almost square pixels(8.6x8.3 microns)
Then, other determining improvements were made.

To only quote most obvious :
- addition of a temperature sensor of the CCD
- internal modifications of the electronic circuit solving most of "youthful problems" of the DSI. Most obvious being the quasi suppression of the "preampli effect" and a very weak thermal noise...
You don't believe it ? Click HERE to see a 1min dark picture with gain at 100% and... 32°C on the CCD (what is exactly the outside temperature today in Tahiti ;o)...
No dark substraction nor post processing in this picture, of course ...

... and more ... a new version of the "Envisage" software which, if it does not answer yet all the requests (in particular the binning") include however of great improvements solving most of the problems noted with the DSI:
- Better "de-bayerising" almost supressing the color artifacts.
- Management of the darks according to the temperature of the CCD

... and new functions obviously interesting :
- Zoom, allowing an easier focusing
- The display of the temperature of CCD
- "Hight Gain" Option
- more efficient colors Control panel ...

And the cherry on the cake is that the "traditional" DSI will benefit of all these software improvements (except for the temperature of course) since Envisage new version will be in free downloading ... may be is it already at the time when you read these lines.
... but why not to read the FAQ developed by the Beta testers group ? You will undoubtedly find there responses to many interrogations.
If however it were not the case, do not hesitate, send me an e-mail, I will share the passion I have for this camera with pleasure.

A French-speaking mailing list exists around "DSI's family "
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/WCA-DSI/
And many english-speaking groups like
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Meade_DSI

On both you can contact me ....

And what about the pictures ? ...

The best is to built your own opinion ...
http://autostarsuite.net/photos/dsi_ii/ where you'll see the pictures realized by the beta test group.


Important : I am not in any way commercially bound with MEADE™ company, but only by the pride to have been selected (with others) to test this camera, and the pleasure which I had to make it ...