ATIK 16 HR-C How good?

[cuivenion]

I've seen the ATIK 16 HR-C advertised in good condition for about £380. I'm wondering if it's worth the money as this camera has been around for a while. Does it stack up against the more recent ZWO and QHY cmos offerings? I currently have a Canon 500D, i was hoping this would be a significant improvement, apart from sensor size of course.

[ollypenrice]

It is insignificantly different from the more recent 314L. Download times are slower and there is no set point cooling, but how important are download times and does set point cooling matter much on a Sony chip? Probably not.

However, the chip is, by modern standards, very small and I'm not a fan of OSC as an 'only camera.' 

I used a 16HR mono for several years when I started. It's good - but that chip hasn't got any bigger!!!

Olly

[cuivenion]

Thanks, I thought it was set point cooling so thats something to think about. Do you think it's worth the asking price?

[ollypenrice]

The Sony chip is low noise and probably best calibrated using a bias-as-dark so I don't think you need to worry about matching temperatures. 

Price looks OK if the camera's in good condition.

Olly

[cuivenion]

Thanks, this is looking quite tempting.

[Spikey]

I rate them very highly as a camera. They are USB1 so a bit slow on image download but it's not a massive amount of data due to the small chip size.

No set point cooling - but again it's the thing that a lot of people just set to max and leave anyway so no worries. I've still got my mono Atik 16HR and its brilliant.

RobH did an amazing crab nebula with the 16HR, worth looking that image up.