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What camera??

gary1968

By gary1968
in Discussions - Cameras

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gary1968

gary1968

Posted
Posted

Right, I have made a couple of my pier tops for folks this year and sold some bits n pieces that were not getting used.......:) The result is I have about £300 burning a hole on my pocket...... (ssshhhhh SWMBO dont know about this.....:))

I'd like to get a decent camera for purely astro use as I have a decent enough camera for everyday use. I will consider anything, astro specific or not, so guys what would you buy if it were you?:lol:

My main interst would be DSO's for this new camera if that influences your advice.

Anyway, thanks in advance......:blob8:

Gary

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Whippy

Whippy

Posted
Posted

When I was down at Astrofest a coule of weeks back, I was looking through some of the images submitted for the Atik picture competition and some of the images taken with the Atik 16ic were really quite impressive. I've seen those for around £300 secondhand. Small chip (especially compared to a DSLR) but it is cooled, uses 1.25" filters and comes with easy to use software too :lol:.

Tony..

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Whippy

Whippy

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Who wants to be limited to dooty lickle chips these days :blob8:

The same people who don't want to spend good money on a perfectly good camera and then pull it to bits just so they can image nebulae :lol:.

Tony..

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Whippy

Whippy

Posted
Posted
And Galaxies , and Clusters and widefield with camera lenses with all that lovely Ha..... just need the danglies to take the risk :lol:

Lol, nice edit :blob8:...

To my mind, with a limited budget you can go one of two ways. First way is getting a DSLR. Great for widefield and big objects like M42, M31 but imaging smaller objects with any great detail would require a pretty long focal length. Something UK skies rarely will let you do. And as Billy as pointed out, DSLR's don't have a great Ha response unless you remove/replace the IR filter.

Second way is to get a smaller chip astro cam. Good for smaller objects but rubbish at widefield unless you want to do a big mosiac.

So I guess it depends on what you want to do. I've got a 450D and an Atik 16hr here and whilst I've haven't had the urge to do any imaging with the 450D yet (widefields don't really float my boat tbh), I can't take pics of the kids with the Atik. Of course if I had a bottomless pit of money, I'd buy a big chip astro cam like the Starlight Xpress H36 for the bog stuff and keep the Atik for all those little objects.

Tony..

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

Posted
Posted

It's was late Tony and I had Lulin on my mind perhaps I was a showing my lulintic tendencies :lol:

Ain't it good we're all different that way we get to see a wide (pun only partially intended) selection of images...

Close up's don't float my boat... well not yet but things maybe changing... still pleanty of "big" things for me to try image as I haven't been at this game for very long... and the last few nights have shown that the obs mods make the next stage "easier" ......

Now if I get an OAG .... hmmm.....

Billy...

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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just a tired thought....

Whats the difference in imaging with a 640x480 7.4x7.4um sensored CCD and cropping a 831x 623 pixel image form a 5.7x5.7um DSLR sized sensor?

The larger pixels inthe ccd will be more sensitive ... but wouldnt the FOV thats imaged be the same?

I need SSSSSSSLlllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppp.....

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blinky

blinky

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Peter I think you are exaclty right! I got my hands on a small sensor cooled CCD (Orion Deep space II) and thought it would give me a 'closer in' view than my 350d but it just appears to be the same as cropping from a full frame of the 350d.

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gary1968

gary1968

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Ah, divided opinions, thats what I like to see..... :blob8: lol

I'm not lookig for a camera that I can use every day, I have a Fuji for that so the new camera will be purely for astro stuff.

I quite like the simplicity of the Toucam but I'm not sure that it is working correctly. If I set it up to do say 30 lx frames then I only get around 20 on average that are useable as the other frames are purely black. So I think the sc1 side must have a wee fault....:lol:

Is the DFK 21AU04.AS Colour from FLO any good, will it produce better images than the toucam? It is within budget, I wont need any adaptors and the filters I have will work with it. I will however need to buy a LPR filter as I dont have one.

Thanks for the replies so far and I look forward to your thoughts o the camera I mentioned.

Gary

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Whippy

Whippy

Posted
Posted
just a tired thought....

Whats the difference in imaging with a 640x480 7.4x7.4um sensored CCD and cropping a 831x 623 pixel image form a 5.7x5.7um DSLR sized sensor?

The larger pixels inthe ccd will be more sensitive ... but wouldnt the FOV thats imaged be the same?

The FOV would be the same but I would imagine the larger pixels would result in less resolution and therefore less detail.

Tony..

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  • 2 weeks later...
gary1968

gary1968

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Well, I finally made a decision.........:)

After reading all the advice here, and on aonther forum. With a lot of internet research I decided that I wanted a dedicated astro ccd so I have now ordered a Orion Star Shoot Deep Space Colour Imager II.

It will be a good starting point for me in the world of DSO imaging and if I want to go over to DSLR at a later date it will be a great guide camera.

For anyone interested exaple images taken with this camera can be found here..... http://www.telescope.com/control/category/~category_id=ssg_galaxies/~pcategory=starshoot

Thanks again for the advice guys and no doubt you will read of my trials and tribulations while learning DSO imaging.

Gary

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