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Beginner DSLR's for Astrophotography?


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I am fairly new to astrophotography and I'm in the market for a reasonably priced DSLR camera (preferably Canon as I am very familiar with them) that would be good for shooting the night sky. I used to own a canon 60d for video production but have since sold it. While looking online I had heard a lot of good things about the Canon 350d as a resonably priced dslr for astrophotography. I'm really not looking to break the bank on a highly advanced camera, just get my feet wet, so to speak. Is it worth investing in a 20da or 60da? as eventually I would love to get into Planet and nebula photography (as I've heard this it a lot trickier) but for now I'm looking for an easy starting off point. Any other recommendations?

Cheers.

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A 60Da is a nice camera, I'm biased of course. :grin:

It has the movie crop mode, same as a 550D, that is ideal for planets and moon plus of course it responds well to Ha.

If you don't want to spend to much a 450, 600, 550 or 1100 could easily be got quite cheaply these days.

If your in the UK.

MPB have 550s around £200, 450s around £130, 600s around £230 and 1100 around  £160.

Or you could lookout for a cheap modded cam on here or the ABS site.

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Thanks so much! I'll ponder it a bit more. In the long run I'd love to go for a 60Da but unfortunately it's not quite in my budget. I appreciate the feedback though and I'll definitely consider the other options.

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You don't need a state of the art camera to take really nice photos of little things in the sky. Large expensive dslr cameras have very large sensors compared to most ccd

cameras. I am not familiar with Canons but you don't need a high pixel count and you don't need a large sensor. Larger sensors are more likely to record all the distorted stars in the corners and are more prone to vignetting with lenses. Telescopes are just big lenses. The one thing you might want in a camera is one with a high signal to noise ratio. If you are taking long exposure photos at 1600 to 3200 ISO you want a camera that has less noise. Unfortunately those are expensive also. I had a lot of fun with a little Sony Donkey. It took some very nice pictures and it wasn't expensive. I would bet there are inexpensive Canons that would work for you.

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I managed to get a second hand 1100D on ebay for 99 pound. It didnt have a lens, but I didn''t need one! I modded it myself and now getting used to taking pics. 

It can be done, and then if you decide to go further you can always go down the CCD route. I would never of thought of trying to mod it myself if it was worth a lot of money, but at less than 100 pound, was worth a punt and it worked (although not a walk in the park!)

Good luck

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There are a couple of nice books on the topic. Search amazon for "astronomy" or "astrophotography" and "dslr"; i generally go to the market place and get cheaper second hand copies. Search abebooks.co.uk too and ebay.

James

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There are just 4 cameras i would recommend based on noise and what you get for the money.

1100D is the cheapest and very popular, low noise and lots of good images has been made with them. A small problem with the 1100D is that there is sometimes a small black line below brighter stars.

550D and 600D have a little higher resolution than the 1100D, but not a big upgrade. Both have the same sensor sensor and noise is comparable to the 1100D

6D is cheapest option for fullframe and very low noise. Price is of course much higher than the others. I found the 6D so great for astrophotography that i have 2 of them :grin:

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