Why so expensive?

[Nova2000]

Hi

As far as I know 

Astronomical cameras are very costly compared to dslr. 

They do not have a live view and other functions and have to be controlled by the pc. I know they have high sensitivity and a cooling system. We need separate power cables to power them up. They give really good images also Tho. 

Why so expensive still? 

[wxsatuser]

I suppose one reason is they are not a massed produced consumer product.

If your thinking of a purchase, look for a second user one, take your time and they can be found for reasonable money.
I got an Atik 383L for the same price of a second user Canon 6D here in the UK, btw the Atik came from a member in Cyprus.

 

[ronin]

As above they are a small market but they also built specifically for AP and as such they deliver the results. What is usually forgotten is that a camera is also more then a lump of hardware it also has software in it. That has a development cost also.

I recall a fairly blunt conversation one imager had with another. When one asked why they got images no where near to the quality of the other they were asked if they used a DSLR. The answer being Yes. The reply came simply as "They are intended for holuday snaps not AP!"

A DSLR was really never intended for AP, the filter is wrong, the sensor gets hot (no cooling), really no long exposures - we have to make it do long exposure. They can be made to do these things but by the time a DSLR is altered sufficently you could likely have just bought a decent AP camera that dtill would perform better.

DSLR+filter removal+Rear cooling (Prima Luce do one)+Interferometer = £££, then it is still colour and not mono, and it is a big lump on the end of a scope.

[Paul73]

Good point.

But, given that DSLR's are designed for day time use, you can get some pretty impressive astro images!

Paul

[andyboy1970]

Also the decent (High end) astro ccd manufacturers use grade "A" sensors with no flaws which cost much more to buy. 

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Like everything in life, you get what you pay for....

[frugal]

The R&D costs of developing a camera are fixed, no matter how many you sell, you need to pay the same out in development costs. You make this back by adding it to the costs of each unit you produce. So if it costs £1million to develop a new camera and £500 in parts and labour to produce each one. If you expect to sell one million of them (reasonable for Canon or Nikon) then you can sell them for £501 and break even (500 + 1,000,000/1,000,000). If you only expect to sell 1,000 cameras then you need to sell them for £1500 (£500 + £1,000,000/1,000).

Plus Astronomical cameras are designed to work in environments where your DSLR will not. You are not supposed to expose your Canon to moisture at it is not sealed (so no being covered in dew at 2am), you are not supposed to take it below -5C (so no exposures overnight in the winter) etc.

Plus it is kind of relative. An Atik 460 (£1999) may be twice as much as a Canon 80D (£1087), but it is only half as much as a Canon 1d Mk5 (£3675).

[AKB]

7 hours ago, ronin said:

Interferometer

Intervalometer?  ...or am I missing something?

[ollypenrice]

6 hours ago, andyboy1970 said:

Also the decent (High end) astro ccd manufacturers use grade "A" sensors with no flaws which cost much more to buy. 

I don't think it matters.  A grade A chip makes precious little difference since we use calibration files, dithered guiding and cosmetic repair. I don't know anybody who specified a grade A in buying a camera. A few gamma ray hits and it's a standard grade anyway! I had the cleanest normal grade Kodak 11 meg known to man - for about three weeks.  No good keeping it in a lead box, though.

I'm sure the cameras are expensive simply because they are in very low volume production. Lots of work is done by hand and a small number of sales need to fund all the R and D. I know the CCD chip is the expensive but but I wonder how much the manufacturers pay for CCD and CMOS?

Olly

[frugal]

7 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I know the CCD chip is the expensive but but I wonder how much the manufacturers pay for CCD and CMOS?

A lot more than Canon, Nikon or Olympus do... I doubt you get a nice price break and a golfing holiday out of a couple of hundred units a year

[andyboy1970]

16 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I don't think it matters.  A grade A chip makes precious little difference since we use calibration files, dithered guiding and cosmetic repair. I don't know anybody who specified a grade A in buying a camera. A few gamma ray hits and it's a standard grade anyway! I had the cleanest normal grade Kodak 11 meg known to man - for about three weeks.  No good keeping it in a lead box, though.

I'm sure the cameras are expensive simply because they are in very low volume production. Lots of work is done by hand and a small number of sales need to fund all the R and D. I know the CCD chip is the expensive but but I wonder how much the manufacturers pay for CCD and CMOS?

Olly

You say that but how many ATIK, Starlight Xpress or QSI cameras go for repair compared to QHY?

Doubt they sent lower grade chips on Hubble or Gaia.

[frugal]

2 minutes ago, andyboy1970 said:

You say that but how many ATIK, Starlight Xpress or QSI cameras go for repair compared to QHY?

Doubt they sent lower grade chips on Hubble or Gaia.

This statement appears on all of the web sites selling the Atik 11000:  
 

Quote

As standard the Atik 11000 is fitted with a KAI 11002 class II sensor.  This does allow for a small number of column defects.  Alternatively a class I sensor with no column defects can be specified.  Does the CCD grade matter?  Atik feel the price premium placed on the class I sensor is not justified when the camera is to be used for astro imaging.  Briefly, Kodak's grading scheme uses a test where the CCD is not cooled, exposures are fractions of a second and the sensor is read several times a second.   In astro imaging conditions for the sensors are very different as exposures are long, the sensor is cooled and readout takes several seconds.  Also its expected that the images will be corrected with a dark frame.  The result is that the grading tests do not reflect performance in astro imaging in a useful way.

 

[ollypenrice]

26 minutes ago, andyboy1970 said:

You say that but how many ATIK, Starlight Xpress or QSI cameras go for repair compared to QHY?

Doubt they sent lower grade chips on Hubble or Gaia.

I'm not sure what point you're making? I don't know the stats for manufacturer returns but there are only two makes on that list of four which I would buy myself.

While a Class A chip would be nice, I honestly think that it would make no difference to a final amateur astrophoto. Using AstroArt 5 to stack and calibrate, I can plug in a column (identified by number) for repair and it simply vanishes from the stack. Likewise sigma clip will take out rogue pixels from any dithered set and replace them with the average value of the rest of the set. My chips are noisy but, with the exception of one old camera which has a  row of 4 dead columns, I normally have no pixels to clean up at the end.  Sure, it would, as I say, be nice to have a perfect chip but once you have the right calibration it simply doesn't matter. (For me the 'right calibration' does not include darks. I use a master bias as a dark, a Defect Map and a hot pixel filter. This is dead easy, the same calibration files working for all exposure lengths.) 

Frugal's quotation from Atik is on the money, I reckon.

Olly

[SonnyE]

Because they can get it. You want a certain thing, you'll cough up the price. And sometimes you do get what you pay for....

Such as my hit and miss with my inexpensive G3. But I'm out there, sucking up light, having fun. Even with my relatively low priced camera, I'm seeing things I never could other wise.

I admire a friends results with his high end gear (CGE Pro, RASA scope, QHY12 camera), knowing I won't ever go there. But I'm happy for him.

I admire his imaging, he admires my ability of guiding.

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, SonnyE said:

Because they can get it. You want a certain thing, you'll cough up the price. And sometimes you do get what you pay for....

 

The small astro camera market is very competitive. If someone could knock out cameras at half price with the same quality I don't doubt that they would. 'Quality' includes customer service after sales. I have no complaints against Atik. None whatever.

Olly

[goodricke1]

16 hours ago, Paul73 said:

Good point.

But, given that DSLR's are designed for day time use, you can get some pretty impressive astro images!

Paul

+1 for that. Last night I took some routine snaps of Comet 41P with a 300mm lens on a DSLR and noticed 5 NGC galaxies in the frame, all 12th magnitude or below and none of which I had the faintest idea existed. Not bad for a hundred quid.

Edit: £100 for the lens, that is.

[ollypenrice]

You can get pretty good astrophotos with a DSLR but I suspect you can only get very good ones with fast, expensive (and probably difficult) optics.

Olly

[Knight of Clear Skies]

On 3/24/2017 at 07:16, ronin said:

The reply came simply as "They are intended for holuday snaps not AP!"

A DSLR was really never intended for AP, the filter is wrong, the sensor gets hot (no cooling), really no long exposures - we have to make it do long exposure.

DSLRs aren't optimised for AP but are still very capable instruments (especially compared to what was available a few years ago) which excel for budget and portable setups - a decent 2nd hand modded Canon can be had for about £200. They just work, long exposures are simply a matter of buying a £10 intervalometer. I can set up my rig and be shooting in less than 10 minutes.

It's unhelpful when people disparage DSLRs rather than simply explaining their limitations. I've now got myself an ASI 1600MM Cool and expect better results without the bayer-matrix penalty to contend with but it hasn't made my DSLR obsolete - I'll use it for different things.

My modded 1100D isn't the ideal instrument for shooting narrowband, but it still gets this in an hour with a 50mm lens and Ha filter.

[ollypenrice]

25 minutes ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

DSLRs aren't optimised for AP but are still very capable instruments (especially compared to what was available a few years ago) which excel for budget and portable setups - a decent 2nd hand modded Canon can be had for about £200. They just work, long exposures are simply a matter of buying a £10 intervalometer. I can set up my rig and be shooting in less than 10 minutes.

It's unhelpful when people disparage DSLRs rather than simply explaining their limitations. I've now got myself an ASI 1600MM Cool and expect better results without the bayer-matrix penalty to contend with but it hasn't made my DSLR obsolete - I'll use it for different things.

My modded 1100D isn't the ideal instrument for shooting narrowband, but it still gets this in an hour with a 50mm lens and Ha filter.

That is a sensational result. No question.

Olly

Edit: What was your F stop here?

[frugal]

The anaolgy I like to think of with regards to DSLRs not being "appropriate" for astrophotography is this: You can have great fun by taking your Fiesta RS, or Porsche 911 to a track day and having a blast, however you are never going to win a Touring Car championship with it  (F1 in this analogy is the Hubble) 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

23 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

That is a sensational result. No question.

Olly

Edit: What was your F stop here?

Thanks Olly, this was shot at f4 with 3 or 4 minute subs (this makes me wonder if a small reflector is a better match for a DSLR rather than the more usual ED80). Didn't bother with dark frames and forgot to take any flats for this lens/filter combo, but did take dark bias which helped a lot. The lens is a 45 year old SMC Takumar, I had a sock with a heat pack wrapped around it to keep the dew off.

[ollypenrice]

I'm convinced that DSLRs thrive on fast f ratios. They generally thrive on short focal lengths, as well, because of their small pixels. Your lens has done a great job.

Olly

[Gina]

I have several SMC Takumar lenses and earlier models and they're brilliant for NB imaging.

[saac]

If only all of my astro related equipment was as useful as my trusty DSLR then I'd have a much easier time justifying purchasing kit.  I'm sure there will come a time, once I have the skills to justify it, that I may contemplate paying £1000 plus for a CCD imaging camera. But it won't ever be an easy decision given the restricted use it will get. Until then, I'm going to celebrate the versatility of my DSLR, holiday snaps and all - after all they are way better than my astro images  

Jim 

[Gina]

I haven't managed to do any astro imaging this year and now all the targets I was hoping to capture with my widefield rig are out of view   What with rain, clouds and fog it's been totally useless.  If we ever get a few clear nights I'll set up for galaxies.  Even in the last couple of days with nice sunny weather by day there have been clouds at night even if just high thin cloud it's useless for imaging.  I'm certainly not surprised that anyone is loathe to buy expensive equipment!