starter camera

[tony]

i did put up a thread in the cameras section but thought it would probably be best to put it in the beginner section.

choice of camera for starters. 1000d 0r 1100 d?

1000d kit £308, 1100d £300 body only.

then again my brother in law is selling his 350d for £200 with lens, bag memory card etc! but as i understand it doesnt have live view and would make focusing a bit of a pain, also i think i read somewhere that you cant use the 350 via a laptop running windows vista, is this correct?

another option is the phillips webcam from morgans and a few other places at about £50.

confused as to the best option:icon_scratch:

there are pros and cons with either so your input would be greatly appreciated.

will be used on a ed80 ds pro and heq5pro if that helps.

[Freddie]

What are you looking to take pics of? For planets you need lots of short exposure frames so the web cam is the way to go. For DSO you need longer exposures so the DSLR would be the way to go.

[tony]

interested in imaging the moon and planets and obviously i'll give the DSO a go.

if i'm reading things right then the webcam will do planets but not so much the dso's which is where the dslr will come in, would a dslr not do both?

[Freddie]

With bright planets and the bright moon you need to get lots of images with short exposures each of a fraction of a second. You capture anything up to 2 or 3 thousand images over a couple of minutes. These are then graded and stcked together using Registax (or similar) The DSLR will not be capable of capturing these short exposure images hence the use of the web cam. Have a look in the planet imaging section and you will see what people are using. The cam is ~£50 and the software free so is pretty cost effective. The DSLR would be used for longer exposures (minutes) to capture the DSOs which are not at all bright and need the long exposures to capture the detail.

[tony]

With bright planets and the bright moon you need to get lots of images with short exposures each of a fraction of a second. You capture anything up to 2 or 3 thousand images over a couple of minutes. These are then graded and stcked together using Registax (or similar) The DSLR will not be capable of capturing these short exposure images hence the use of the web cam. Have a look in the planet imaging section and you will see what people are using. The cam is ~£50 and the software free so is pretty cost effective. The DSLR would be used for longer exposures (minutes) to capture the DSOs which are not at all bright and need the long exposures to capture the detail.

[tony]

the inlaws brother has a 1000d up for grabs now.