Modded DSLR to cooled OSC or mono ?

[SAW]

Hi,

Trying to decide what to upgrade to from a modded 600d. I've had a 183mm and 183mc before but never really gave them much time to get used to so went back my my old modded DSLR. 

Is a cooled OSC much of an upgrade from a modded DSLR, will I actually notice much difference ?

Thanks. 

[david_taurus83]

What made you give up mono before? Lack of time? Weather? It's a long term project, mono, imo, here in the UK. If your considering the investment why not look at the latest colour cameras like the ASI2600MC or QHY268C? Assuming you'd need to buy a mono cam, filters, filterwheel etc your probably not far off the cost of one of these new colour cameras. 

[ONIKKINEN]

Cooling is just a minor part of the package with new cameras, especially the 2600MC and others with the same Sony IMX571 sensor. For starters, you can expect to almost double your cameras quantum efficiency = the amount of light that hits the sensor and actually gets turned into a value in a pixel. So, a 30s exposure will gather 60s worth of light compared to the 600D. Noise will just disappear compared to the old Canon DSLRs.

Shooting with my Rising Cam branded IMX571 feels like cheat codes after using my old 550D. I think a 10s exposure is about as useful now as a 30s exposure used to be, or maybe even better. I am never going to touch the 550D again. I would say its impossible to not notice the difference.

Its not as plug and play as DSLRs, so if thats why you gave up with the 183mm and 183mc, then expect to have the same convenience issues with any model. But the image quality will be objectively better.

[Tim]

What telescope are you using, or intending to use?  And what are your skies like?

Mono cameras with filters are more forgiving if the telescope has less than perfect colour correction.

Personally I like to have both options available, mono for when the conditions, weather patterns, and DSO allow, and for narrowband targets, but also a OSC for patchy skies, smash and grab imaging, star parties and dark sky sites.

There's no easy clear winner, you just have to work out what your best compromise will be. Many that come from DSLR imaging find that mono+filters is a lot of faffing around in comparison,  and the newer ranges of 14 and 16 bit large chip OSC coming on to the astro scene these days is changing the thrust of astrophotography a little, making it more accessible to newcomers.

Have fun choosing

Tim

[SAW]

Currently just using a Vixen FL55SS with my modded DSLR but I am looking to replace this with either a Redcat or WO61 as it's easier to mount camera etc on them.  I'm in a bottle 4 area. 

[StarWomble]

I've just done exactly this - moved from 600D to 2600MC-Pro. The workflow is different but I also implemented ASIair Plus to ease the workflow migration. Combined, they are a very good platform, at least to me anyway.

Its really just about getting used to the working differences - to me it's a simpler setup to get results and saves a lot of time. Time is the thing that's most precious, especially here in the UK with the weather and limited imaging opportunities

[Lee_P]

+1 for ASI2600MC if you can stretch to that. It works well with the kind of wide-field refractors that you mentioned. Lots of example photos here.

Echoing what others have said, it would be good to know exactly why you gave up on a Mono and OSC camera before, as it's likely that those issues will still exist.

One bonus of a cooled camera that I don't think has been mentioned is the ability to create a library of calibration frames. That helps to make things a bit easier.

[carastro]

I switched to Mono from DSLR and would never go back.  Cooled, more sensitive and narrowband option.  I know that there are filters now for OSC cameras though.

I can get an image in one evening, of several hours of course, I just set up a sequence.

Carole   

Edited November 10, 2021 by carastro

[StarWomble]

1 hour ago, carastro said:

I switched to Mono from DSLR and would never go back.  Cooled, more sensitive and narrowband option.  I know that there are filters now for OSC cameras though.

I can get an image in one evening or several hours of course, I just set up a sequence.

Carole   

I think if you have the imaging time available and experience/know-how, Mono with appropriate filters will beat OSC as they are quite a bit more sensitive as Carole states - I sadly don't have the imaging time budget hence my choice of  OSC over mono.. If I had the time I'd maybe have gone mono for the reasons stated. Horses for courses maybe?

[Jerry Barnes]

I had the same choice to make some months ago.  I eventually decided to go for the OSC then with an L-enhance filter I could do a pseudo hubble like image if I wanted to.  I've had limited success doing that but neither have I had many opportunities to try.  Another consideration was cost, circa 3k for mono and 2K for OSC very roughly depending on final choices (I went for the 2600MC Pro which wasnt cheap - lots of flowers!)

Either should give you good results at the end of the day.

[Tim]

Things might be a little different in the future, maybe. I have always hankered after a mono camera that could be switched to a OSC via single filter, but the reality is more likely to be a OSC that makes a perfectly good mono camera with binning, especially the way cmos chips are developing at the moment, my phone has a 108MP camera now and goodess knows where they will end up!

[Tim]

2 hours ago, carastro said:

I switched to Mono from DSLR and would never go back.  Cooled, more sensitive and narrowband option. 

Carole   

I know what you mean, can still remember the first time a mono image came through on my setup, it was the horsehead with a Ha filter on an old Starlight H9 camera and it just blew me away. I'd been using the original old QHY8 OSC up to then. If I could only have one camera it would be the mono,  but the luxury of both is much appreciated. In an ideal world I'd have a matching telescope and run both cameras at once, imagine the cables!!

Are you going to Kelling for Winterfest Carole? I can't remember the answer if I already asked you!

[bobro]

4 hours ago, carastro said:

I just set up a sequence.

For me this is the key to the Mono/OSC debate - if going mono then a good level of automation with a stable setup helps, otherwise it's easy to end up with uncompleted images. Having said that, an initial mono image of a target is a great way to gauge how it could work out. 

I went from modified DSLR to mono with a manual filter wheel. The manual wheel was probably a mistake as a motorised wheel could have been better, especially as current imaging programs control filters. 

With limited imaging time I'm tempted to revert to an OSC route, though a split between my wider FOV scope with the DSLR and the other narrower FOV scope with the mono camera is tempting, covering both worlds.

Mono is just more complex, and can be a bit much if other parts of the setup (like mine!) aren't so good and are causing issues.

[rickwayne]

I really don't mean to revive this pie-fight all over again, but since luminance gathers photons so much more efficiently than a Bayer matrix, and the human eye depends much more on luminance than chrominance to discern detail, for the skies most of us shoot in, an LRGB setup can achieve a given image quality in less imaging time, not more. Honest.

If, say, clouds roll in, or you have equipment problems, then certainly mono imaging can leave you with unbalanced sets of subs for your channels. You have to manage the four channels' worth of subs. And run a filter wheel. And do the RGB compositing instead of letting a debayering algorithm do it for you. OSC sensors are more popular for other things, and so enjoy greater economies of scale and become available for astro earlier. These are all perfectly good reasons to go OSC, and I'm not claiming that such a rig is lesser, that people who use them have less mojo, or that mono is ineffably better in some fashion. But for most of us, mono is more time-efficient.

[smr]

For me it has been a huge leap between an unmodded or uncooled DSLR and a cooled OSC imo, especially one of the modern OSCs such as the 2600MC Pro.

This was 2019 with my DSLR, unmodded though, 16 hours 

 

And 2021 with my 2600MC Pro, 5 hours