Web cam or DSLR

[Mikejh]

As a beginner I am not sure when it would be advantageous to use a webcam and when it is sensible to use a DSLR-any suggestions?

[Pete Presland]

in general, a webcam for planetary and lunar imaging, and dslr for deep sky objects.but that is just the beginning.

[sologuitarist61]

Don't have a web cam but the disadvantages that I see to them is the lack of resolution, whereas with a DSLR you are using anything up to 15-megapixels. The disadvantages with a DSLR is that they are very heavy and only give a wide view through the scope.

[Mikejh]

Thanks - that is a good start

[JamesF]

Planetary imaging particularly is often best achieved by combining thousands of image frames into a single image to reduce noise and atmospheric distortion. A webcam is often better suited to this than a DSLR. In particular when objects are faint, high resolution DSLR sensors are not necessarily advantageous. On the moon and sun, either can work well. A webcam won't be able to image the entire sun or moon at once so it's usual to make a mosaic of multiple images, whereas a DSLR might be able to do so, or can also be used to create mosaics.

For DSO imaging DSLRs do work well and the opportunity exists to utilise the higher resolution because exposures are much longer, but webcams modified for long exposure such as the SPC900 and Toucam can do a reasonable job too.

James

[Cornelius Varley]

Don't have a web cam but the disadvantages that I see to them is the lack of resolution, whereas with a DSLR you are using anything up to 15-megapixels. The disadvantages with a DSLR is that they are very heavy and only give a wide view through the scope.

Having a low resoltion webcam isn't a disadvantage for planetary imaging, you wouldn't be able to use the full resolution of the camera anyway unless you had the very big telescope (think Hubble or bigger) to get a image that would fill the whole sensor. For lunar imaging it is a fairly simple procedure to create multi-mega pixel images using a webcam by imaging overlapping areas of the moon and creating a mosaic from them.

Peter