[avandonk]

Duncan there has been a lot of good advice here so far. A very good starting point is any decent DSLR and when you have mastered that then maybe work out what your next step is.

I started off with an unmodded Canon 20D and within minutes was getting better results than I ever got with film. Once I went as far as I could with the 20D I bought a Modded Canon 5D or 5DH as it is now known.

Not many people realise that Hutech only started calling their modded cameras after the shorthand started on IIS by just adding a H to the Canon 5D I had purchased from them to save typing 'Hutech modified'.

As you may know I Have been experimenting with Peltier fridge cooling my 5DH. I want to do wide fields so the full frame Canon is for me the best starting point. I stlll have not exhausted the possibilities with this camera as I am still learning what can be done.


Post processing of the data you collect becomes ever more demanding as you go up the chain of cameras now available.

The chain as I see it is


DSLR
Modded DSLR
Peltier cooled modded DSLR
One shot colour cooled CCD
Dedicated astro cooled Mono CCD


There is no easy answer as all these cameras will give decent results but the quality gets better assuming competence in collecting and processing the data as you go up the chain.

Quality has two components the main one is signal to noise. Once you have very good signal to noise then greater dynamic range can be a decider.


Bert