choosing dslr for astrophotography

[Spiderduck]

will an older basic 10mp set up do for a scope starter like me ? Pls advise on a lens, which focal length ?

[RichM63]

Well we see lots of images and people who have Canon 1000D which is 10.1MP, or 350D @ 8.1,  so the answer must be yes.

[ronin]

If that is what you have then yes, point it at the sky.

Lens I suggest a wide one (at least at first) and set to one or two settings less then full aperture - tends to sharpen things up a little. Focal length try 35mm area or 50mm probably no more.

You will need to be able to make/force the camera to be fully manual - focus, exposure aperture, ISO literally everything.

I am guessing no tracking mount?

If so then set exposure to about 20 seconds, ISO 800 or 1600.

You will need a dark sky, otherwise things get lost and you get a nice image of light polution.

Check if the camera has it's own noise reduction.

If it does set it on - what happend here is you take a 20 second exposure of something, camera then take another 20 second exposure of "nothing" (noise) then subtracts the noise from the exposure. So the total expoaure is twice as long.

I suggest smaller aperture then full, one less ISO then max and 20 seconds as if the image is too dim you have the chance to try again by increasing one at a time to see what results then come out. Means you could increase to ISO 1600, 30 seconds or full aperture.

[jgs001]

Nothing wrong with that at all... what do you have ? The more information you can provide, the better able we'll be to advise you.

If you do not have a tracking mount, then you're limited in exposure length to something like 400/focal length (assumes a crop sensor camera). I would not recommend using In Camera Noise Reduction, as you lose 50% of your capture time, even more important if you're not tracking.. 

[happy-kat]

The useful feature to look out for is live view.

So no older than a Canon 450d if buying second hand if you want live view.

Do you already have a dslr?

Lens depends on what you want to image.

What mount tripod well you be using?

[ollypenrice]

The truth is that tiny pixels are rarely what you want for deep sky imaging anyway. At very short focal lengths (camera lenses) they might be good but, even in short focal length scope territory, bigger ones are more appropriate.

Olly

[DaveS]

If it wasn't for the noise I'd suggest a S/H 5D (Original) 12 mp 8.4 micron pixels, ie comparable to most CCD cameras.