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Old 18-05-2013, 09:53 PM
Garbz (Chris)
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Garbz is offline
 
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 644
As someone who's just moved away from DSLRs, don't do it. If you're going for astrophotography get yourself a dedicated CCD.

I started on a 6 year old Nikon D200. It worked just as you may expect for such an old camera. Then I upgraded to a D800 which is about the best of the best in terms of sensitivity etc.

First problem, lack of response to IR band. There's no good having a high ISO sensitivity if there's something blocking your band of interest. In this respect you should likely look at the 60Da.

Second problem, vignetting and coma. I used the D800 in full frame mode for one single shooting session only. Vignetting and coma were completely uncorrectable on my SCT. There's no point, it was nothing more than wasted portions of the sensor.

Third problem, ludicrously large images like 20megapixel put an incredible strain on processing. In the one case where I did shoot full frame on the D800 my stacking software refused to stack (there's no 64bit version of DeepSkyStacker) as it very quickly hit the memory limit. When I used another program to stack the image it was utterly painful even on my modern machine to process the image, not to mention that the resolution was way finer than any effects of optics and seeing so again a great waste.

Finally never underestimated the power of cooling. I eventually upgraded from the ever so incredibly sensitive D800 to a QHY10, which is only about 2/3rds of the price and has THE SAME SENSOR AS MY 6 YEAR OLD D200!!!! None the less I was blown away by the much better performance.

Then there's the other things you get such as consistent temperature allowing you to use one set of darks rather than doing a set every imaging session, integration in the software to allow for things like plate solving, autofocus, the cameras are significantly lighter, no need to charge batteries, and I'm sure I could think of more if it weren't 10pm.

In summary, if you're not going to take normal photos and want an astronomy camera, don't waste your time with a DSLR.
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