I haven't done much backyard astronomy in a while, but since upgrading my DSLR from a Canon 450D to 7D I figured I'd give it another go.
Below is a 100% crop of the Orion Nebula taken on the vanilla 7D (no telescope, just camera and lens aimed at sky) on an EQ6
without autoguiding. Settings:
- Lens: 250mm, f/5.6 kit lens from the previous 450D
- Settings: ISO800, 20 secs exposure, ICNR off
- Stack: 25 light, 4 dark
- Post-processing: leveling and LR deconvolution
I'm blown away by the 7D over the 450D as the more sensitive sensor coupled with a higher pixel density gives me better quality at the same ISO and a higher effective zoom at 100% crop (due to extra pixels). I'm definitely not a fan of the megapixel war, but in this case I'm fairly impressed with Canon's newer generation sensors.
However I'm thinking of giving up astrophotography for a while until I can afford some autoguiding hardware (mount tracking upgrade, guide-scope + camera, etc).
Spending 2 hours aligning the mount manually to get a maximum of a couple of minutes exposure is getting tedious and taking the fun away.