[garymck (Gary)]

Hi,
I currently have a Nikon D7000 camera. I don't use it much as It's way to heavy to carry for happy snaps and holiday pics (I carted it all over a trip to Turkey and swore I'd never do it again!!). I've never really used it for astro stuff as I've always had a dedicated cooled astro camera, and besides, it needs an additional special cable to be able to do exposures over 30 seconds, not just a usb.

I would like to think about moving to a new camera with a use case of 50/50 normal/astro use (astro use would be both nightscapes and DS objects. Would I gain much in astro performance with a new camera, particularly a lightweight one, that was suitable for domestic use? Or is the D7000 still good enough for decent astro use?

So if the requirements were:
light weight
good for astro
cost up to 2k

I'm not wedded to Nikon, so other brands considered, what do you think? Camera suggestions please...

cheers
Gary