Hi Peter,
Thanks for the offer, I should have the DBK618 in my hot little hands by the end of next week and this is the camera that I was looking at before the budget blew out to $1500 for a CCD recently....
As you know, I have reset my expectations somewhat, and dedicated CCD will have to wait a bit (never, if SWMBO has her way). I picked up a CPU cooler and fan as well as an GPU fan for $5 each at the local PC shop so as soon as I can get some aluminium or copper for the box, and a $15 peltier, the coolbox is a go. Pretty cheap for cooling the 1000D as well as optionally the son's 550D or later on (if I decide to splurge) maybe even the 60Da! (same price as a QHY8L-ish).
I have no real plans to rip out the UVIR filter in any of the cams yet, so its longer subs with less noise and LP for me for now, with the limited budget I have available at the moment. I am keen to see how much easier it should be to process without my horrendous light pollution I have here and I can also use that filter for some widefield tracked shots I have been hankering to take.
Thanks for letting me hang on to the QHY8, I will endeavour to put it to good use tonight if the wind dies down a bit and the sky stays clear, (fingers crossed) as I am keen to try it on Leo's M65&M66 for some CCD goodness. I will take good care of it, who knows.....it may even sway me over to the dark side again if I get the hang of it.
I really do need a better video/guider than the toucam, its getting harder to find a good star in PHD even with the nicer 50mm guidescope. I was getting cranky with it the other night as the loss of guidestars kept screwing up the guiding and ruining my shots, even with the gain set to auto and the subs of 3 -5 secs to bring up the SNR. PLUS, this thing will KILL on some planetary with the 5x powermate which is where I started this slippery AP journey.
Sounds like I have made up my mind again......
in the meantime, some QHY8 action is on the cards....
Cheers
Chris