[avandonk]

For astro work a Canon will always beat a Nikon. Even the Nikon D3 will not give you an unmodified raw frame. There is some sort of propriety 'noise reduction' going on even with the Nikon raw frame which loses you all the dim stars and stuff.

It is a shame as the Nikon sensor may be better but we have no way of really knowing. If the noise is not recorded then any claims of image quality are meaningless.

It is easy to have very good signal to noise if you arbitrarily set an upper floor level as noise and then set it to zero.

There is information buried in the noise so that is why we stack multiple dithered images.

Note I am not decrying Nikons. Both Canon and Nikon cameras are designed for terrestial work and for this they are both stunning compared to any film camera. It is only us amateur astrophotographers that use them for what they were not designed for.

If I am wrong please let me know.



Bert