been offered a good deal or is it?

[rowan46]

A mate has offered me a very competitive price on a sony alpha a200 has anyone used these for astrowork are they any good or should I save lots more money and get a canon

[stevebb]

It is an ok camera but for the price you would be better with the Pentax IST if you can find one, these will now be cheap as they are 4 years old. However, the infra red blocking filter on the ist is fairly weak and would be a better choice by far for deep sky objects.

Best wishes,

Steve

[pvaz]

I had the a100 and a200. On regular photography it was bad on any ISO setting above 400 when compared to any Canon I've used. On daylight they are pretty good and the pics seam to have more appealing colors then the Canon DSLRs, but that can be solved on the canons by increasing saturation a bit.

I'm not an astro imager, but I would guess a good signal to noise ratio for high ISO settings, is an important performance requirement for astro imaging.

[barkis]

It's safe to say the modified Canons are a success story.

I know the modded 1000D is excellent, and I understand later models have a good Ha response without the Mod..

I would seek further confirmation on that though.

Ron.