Canon 1200d or nikon 3200

[mondeoman]

Hi all,i am after some advice,i would like to purchase a dslr camera to be used for general photography but to also do some basic astrophotograpy,the canon 1200d and nikon 3200 are both in budget.( around £300) but i am confused as to which is best.Any advice would be appreciated before i take the plunge.

[beamer3.6m]

Canon is well suported for astro.

[buikimaging]

It is a tough decision to be made, the Canon has a 18 megapixel sensor vs 24 on the Nikon, depending on your scope you will either want larger pixels to prevent oversampling or smaller pixels to prevent undersampling. As I am on a mobile device I can not tell what scope you currently have, the rule is the longer the focal length, the larger the pixels should be. The smaller the focal length the smaller the pixels should be. The sensor size is almost the same on both sensors. Canon is widely seen as a camera with a better overall noise suppression with no amp glow apparent in most of their models. Both have good astro support and both have some good software tools available in the form of BackyardEOS and BackyardNikon.

It is a tough call as both models feature almost the same specs. My preference would be the Canon because of its strong fanbase in the astro world. However the Nikon has more pixels and would be the better shot in daytime photography. Depending on what you would be doing most I would consider the Canon as a more astrophotograpy cam and the Nikon if the camera would be used in daytime photography more often

[happy-kat]

My old 4 megaixel Kodak takes stonking images so I don't personally follow the increase in megapixel size for my personal uses and my 1100d is enough and the ability to control it from my Android tablet makes Canon the choice.

[happy-kat]

Dpreview is useful site to look at the details and read any reviews.

[happy-kat]

Sorry another thought can you turn off dark noise suppression or what ever it is called on the Nikon?

[freiform]

You can disable noise reduction for long time exposures (i.e. internal dark frame subtraction) on the Nikon. 

Besides what has been mentioned here, and the supposedly lower noise of current Nikons, there are two main features I would consider: LiveView and Bulb support via USB. It makes life so much easier. I have a D3100 and neither of those two features. So I had to build a small circuit for computer-triggered exposures > 30s and focusing without LiveView (USB) often is a pain. Besides that I enjoy the D3100 in combination with DigiCamControl, which also has some nice astro-features and supports e.g. manual triggering via RS232.

Having said that, I just got myself a used 1000Da for more convenience and increased sensitivity towards the red end of the spectrum...