First Dedicated Astrophotography camera

[Hourus]

Hi all long time lurker first time poster,

looking at getting my first astro camera which will be an upgrade from an unmoded DSLR. Will ultimately use on an az-eq6r with a SW ed72 and SW ed80 with eventual upgrade to a high focal length of 1000-3000 or something.

Guided with 50mm Orion with 120mm s.

At the moment i am looking at the ZWO 294mc pro(I read alot of the initial problems are fixed) ZWO 071mc pro or 1600mm pro with filters.

Really not sure how I would go with mono and filters because my processing is pretty bad atm. to stack i use sequator because DSS doesn't seem to give me good results and i tweak in just light-room because i have not worked out how to do anything useful in Photoshop.

I live in bortle 8 but travel to dark site using star Adventurer. Not sure how il go hauling the eq6 plus power and everything else.

Please give all thoughts as everything I look up contradicts each other

[pluto]

Hi Matthew,
I can't really help with the camera choice as I don't have any experience with the newer ASI cameras for deep sky stuff, though I've seen some good stuff from the 1600 and that 294mc looks good on paper.

The learning curve is a little higher when dealing with a mono camera and filters but it can give you higher quality data. Also if you go mono then you'll have more flexibility doing some narrowband if you wish, which can be good even if you're under dark skies - for example adding a bit of Ha to galaxy images can really help bring out the emission nebulae and make the image pop.
Obviously you can get an image out of an OSC camera quicker, and potentially cheaper, so it's really up to how much time and money you want to spend. Ultimately there's a reason why most people end up getting a mono camera and filters at some point in their AP journey.

As for processing, Sequator or DSS should get you decent results for stacking. I'd recommend either Startools or Pixinsight for processing (If you get Pixinsight then do your stacking in that too). Final tweaks in Lightroom is fine and is what I do - I basically never use PS for astro stuff as the image is 90% there out of Startools/Pixinsight and Lightroom is great for doing final colour balance etc.

And hauling an EQ6 with power and everything to a dark site is a PITA IMO!

[RickS]

I have an ASI1600mm Pro and an ASI294mc Pro.

Very happy with the ASI1600mm and getting great results from it at high gain (200) with short subs and fast lenses/scopes on a Star Adventurer.

I'm still struggling a bit with the ASI294. I got improvements by following suggestions for best practice with this camera from a post on Cloudy Nights (see below) but I'm still not 100% happy. I think that light box flats aren't working well with this camera, though they work perfectly well with the ASI1600mm. My next step is to try sky flats and see if that gets acceptable results combined with all the other improvements I have made.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/636301-asi294mc-calibration-–-testing-notes-thoughts-and-opinions.

Cheers,
Rick.

[xelasnave]

Probably no perfect answer but zwo mono and filters for me is great.

Processing will come.
Alex

[TareqPhoto]

Bortle 8 = Light Pollution = Mono cooled camera + NB filters


Good luck!