Camera comparison

[Mickoid (Michael)]

On Monday night I stayed up to capture Mars as it was clear and calm. I used both my Canon 550d dslr and a ZWOASI120MMs camera through a 200mm f5 Newtonian on an old EQ5 mount and 5x Powermate. No need to guess which produced the better image. Seeing was variable and was changing quickly between very good to poor so it was hit and miss shooting with the LRGB filters because you never knew how affected by the seeing, each capture would be. I would have liked the luminance capture to be better but the red and green has held this together because the blue filter capture was horrible. Anyway this was my first Mars using LRGB filters with a mono camera so it is a milestone for me at least. The Canon 550d shot was taken in movie crop mode at 50fps 400-800 iso video captures. Both shots processed in Pipp, Autostakkert, Registax and finished in Photoshop.

[Anth10 (Anthony M)]

Great comparison Mick,
I like them both. The second one shows a lot of surface relief which makes it pop. The cloud on the North Pole is very clear as with Olympus Mons. I’d be very proud of these shots- Mars is showing nicely this time around at least - we all remember last years dust storms. Make the most of it Mick - i’d like to see Syrtis Major next if you can capture it in the right phase.
Well done

Anth

[Quopaz (Nick)]

Yes interesting comparison, both pretty good. Also good timing for a comparison as I've been using a Canon 60D and just yesterday ordered an ASI 462MC. Got a laptop last week too, but I don't know how long it will take me to get it all running. Got no idea how to set it up, so I'll just have to keep using the Canon for a while.

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Thanks for the comments Anthony and Nick. We have to keep our fingers crossed no global dust storms develop over the next couple of weeks. Good thing about photographing the planets is the moon makes very little difference to the final outcome, unlike Deep Sky imagery. Nick, I'd been using a DSLR for years and only started playing with the ZWO camera about a year ago. I just downloaded Sharpcap on my laptop and it recognised the camera pretty much straight away. I don't think you'll be having any issues with the new camera and once you give it a go, the 60d will begin collecting dust