What is the best Astrophotography camera in the market?

[doseri]

Hi all

In Astrophotography world there are Many camera in the market and many Companies Products to select From, I am not a Beginner In Astrophotography, BUT I cannot pick out one ,there for i like from the members to choose the best and the lowest price for Astrophotography CAMERA in the below points:

1-ccd Size

2- Monochrome CCD vs Color CCD

3- Performance

3- the low price to get

4- Companies Products to select From

wait for you choose

Beat regards

sam

[Tinker1947]

I think people would like to see a budget, if you autoguide, your scope mount ect, it would all help to make the right selection..

[doseri]

I think people would like to see a budget, if you autoguide, your scope mount ect, it would all help to make the right selection..

hi

the budget about 3000$ and do not have auto guide but i have meade deep sky imager 1 pro i will use it for auto-guiding

[pete_l]

Ahhh, the old question. You want the best and the lowest cost.

I think you can have one or the other - but not both at the same time.

Personally, if I was spending 3,000 USD I'[d be looking at a Starlight Xpress or an ATIK model. After that, it comes down to personal preferenceces. Do you want a Colour one-shot or a Mono camera + filter wheel? Do you want wide fields or detailed planetary images.

Also consider whether youi'll need to buy any processing software to get the best out of you $$$$$$ camera - or is freeware good enough for what you want.

[Gina]

Wish you could remove the Bayer layer from a DSLR then you could have a half-frame sensor of reasonable sensitivity for around three hundred quid plus some DIY and Peltier TEC.

[ollypenrice]

I would go for an Atik 4000 mono. Atik are excellent cameras and, although I have less experience of other makes, I do have some. I'm not convinced by SX or QHY reliability.

SBIG seem fine and QSI are superb but expensive.

The Atik 4000 has a fairly large square chip (which makes the most of the scope's image circle) and the cooler and software are both better than SX. It has large, sensitive pixels and no need for a shutter, which has advantages.

I use both the 4000 mono and colour professionally and they work very hard here. I'd go for mono over OSC if I only had one because the mono is faster and more flexible, notably for getting good Ha in the moonlight and other narrowband as well.

I fully accept that others will disagree but that's an honest statement of my own preferences. Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of thinking two cameras with the same chip are necessarily equivalent. This is far from true.

Olly