Camera for Astrophotography

[PhotomanJohn]

A good friend has just asked me for a recommendation for a camera to use on his 10" reflector telescope. I have zero experience in this area.

Being most familiar with Nikon cameras, I would think that an entry level DSLR like the D3300 would work well for him. I was also thinking that there maybe some mirror-less options that might work as well or better.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

John

[Shadowman]

The manufacturers of his telescope is a good place to start, he'll need a camera mount adapter for his camera. When I ventured into astrophotography I initially used my D60 which didn't have LiveView, this setup was good for capturing the moon, but when it came to deep sky photography my efforts suffered a bit. There is also software available that'll help with tracking stars, etc.

[Glenn NK]

This guy does a huge amount of Astrophotography - maybe because he's an astrophysicist. (wink)

http://www.clarkvision.com/index.html

He uses a 7D Mark II

Glenn

[Manfred M]

A bit pricey, but this is the camera that Nikon has recently released for astrophotography.

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Pro...web-0209-D810a

[shreds]

Only on pre-order sadly at present but it will be interesting to see how it performs.

[inkista]

There's also the Canon 60Da. Not as new, fancy, or full-frame as the D810a, but then, not as pricey, either.

And of course, these "a" models mostly assume the camera won't be used regularly for non-astro photography--otherwise you also have to get a UV/IR cut filter.

[William W]

Your friend might also consider a secondhand EOS20Da.

Noting also that, that particular Canon model has two "Live View" functions.

If I recall correctly -
one is about x5 mag and the other is x10 mag. the Live View functionality has some limitation regarding the lenses that it works with: the main purpose is for accurate focusing and Live View has to be deactivated for exposure. I played with one a long time ago, obviously (I expect) not as many bells and whistles as the EOS60Da, but the 20Da was very easy to use and had very low noise levels, too.

The 20Da seems to be well regarded by that niche of Photographers, so maybe there will not be many around, but worth mentioning if one has a limited budget.

. . . I would think that an entry level DSLR like the D3300 would work well for him. . . .

I think your friend needs to consider and then express how serious the "astro" portion is going to be in his 'general' "photography".

I think that the "a" factor in the nomenclature is relatively important.

If your friend is halfway keen about launching this endeavour. I liken it to someone being more than half-way keen on "macro" - I'd usually always encourage them to get a dedicated "Macro" lens.

WW

[PhotomanJohn]

Thank you all for your comments.

John

[HaseebM]

Buy a T2i or 550D, suffiicient for amateur astrophotography. If you want something more fancy then the 60Da recommendation is good. A T-Adapter and camera specific T-Ring is in addition. There are also dedicated AP cameras available in a vast range with built in coolers to cut down on noise during long exposures. You can check www.astropix.com for more information or visit www.indianastronomer.net for some basic information.

A laptop is necessary and in combination with BackyardEOS, can prove invaluable for managing your exposure, shutter, ISO etc., with live view.

[tao2]

Never taken a photo through a camera/telescope but wouldn't the quality of the telescope be far more important than the camera. They seemed tae manage OK before digital. After all, any camera is just a box...

[Tringa]

I agree look at the telescope first and find out what camera mounts the manufacturer makes.

Then it depends on how serious your friend is about astrophotography. If he just wants the odd shot of the moon, planets and the occasional one of a deep sky object, or at present does not know how far he wants to go, then probably any second hand DSLR that will fit the scope will be OK.

If he wants to go further then a dedicated astro camera plus a good mount and guidance system is probably the way to go. From what I have read the first requirement is very deep pockets.

A good source of information are Astronomy forums - I think all will have a astrophotography section.

Dave

[HaseebM]

Never taken a photo through a camera/telescope but wouldn't the quality of the telescope be far more important than the camera. They seemed tae manage OK before digital. After all, any camera is just a box...

Indeed Boab! However nowadays most of the AP work is done with a APO ( Apochromatic ) Refractor and even smaller one's like the 71mm is more than adequate for deep space objects. It is also possible to piggyback your camera with lens atop your scope to take wide field images. Even if the OP choses a Schmidt-Cassegrain, it will do provided he knows the limits of long exposures without autoguiding. An SCT however will work well on Planets and Moon. Hardly few prefer a Reflector due to its large size and unwieldiness. Unless one choses a rather poor scope with highly inferior mirror or out of collimation, possibility of going wrong with a scope is negligible.

[myrah fernandes]

Nikon vs Canon digital SLR Cameras for Astrophotography

Considerations for Long-Exposure Deep-Sky Astrophotography

Listed below are some things to consider when choosing between a Nikon and Canon DSLR camera for long-exposure deep-sky astrophotography. The list is not meant to be exhaustive as things change very rapidly in the world of DSLRs.

Canon

Canon recognizes that astrophotography is a specific use of their cameras and has produced the Canon 20Da, a camera that is specifically designed for astrophotography. Although this model has been discontinued, it can still be found used.
Canon provides excellent documentation on their equipment, such as detailed technical documents like the EOS 400D white paper, EOS 1D Mark III white paper, EOS 350D white paper, and this white paper on full-frame Canon CMOS sensors.
More support for Canon cameras is available from third party software vendors, such as Images Plus and Nebulosity. Although these vendors are beginning to implement more extensive support for Nikon DSLRs, Canons are usually supported first because so many more people are using Canons for astrophotography.

Canon EOS Digital SLR cameras can only use EF auto-focus lenses. When Canon designed their EOS system, they completely redesigned the lens mount. Canon's previous FD lens system for film SLR manual focus cameras are not made for EOS bodies. The lens flange to focal plane distance for the FD series is 42mm. The lens flange to focal plane distance on the EOS series is 44mm.
You can get a simple mechanical adapter that will mount FD lenses on EOS bodies, but they will not focus at infinity. You can also get a more complex optical adapter that has lens elements that will allow focusing of FD lenses at infinity on EOS bodies, but the Canon version is no longer manufactured and is difficult to find and very expensive when available. The Canon optical adapter also had a 1.26x multiplier factor which made the focal length of the lenses longer and also slower by that factor. As with the use of any multiplier or converter, optical quality also suffered somewhat. Third party manufacturers also make optical converters, but their optical quality is very poor.

Because of the shorter lens flange to focal plane distance on Canon EOS bodies, other manufacturer's lenses (indeed, such as Nikon) can be used on Canon DSLR bodies with inexpensive adapters, such as this one from Fotodiox for $28. Note that the lenses must be used in stop-down metering mode and auto-focus doesn't work, but these are not a necessity for astrophotography anyway. Many other brands of lenses can be used with Fotodiox adapters on Canon DSLR cameras.
Canon has a plug on the camera body for a hard-wired remote shutter release to allow use of the TC-80N3, a very handy and useful timer remote control.
Out of the box, this timer remote control has a proprietary Canon N3 plug on the end of the cord that will only fit the high end Canon EOS DSLR cameras such as the 1D series and the 40D, 30D, 20D. However, it can very easily be adapted to work with the Canon EOS consumer DSLR cameras such as the 300D, 350D and 400D. All you have to do is cut the plug off and replace it with a mini stereo plug. It is just three wires involved and is simple to do.

While the Canon TC-80N3 remote is expensive at $130, it allows you to completely automate the image acquisition portion of an astrophotography session because it is also an intervalometer which allows shooting numerous frames at a particular exposure with a pre-determined amount of time between exposures.



The latest generation of Canon cameras, such as the 50D,40D, 500D, 450D, 5D Mark II 1D Mark III can be controlled through a single USB cable. Even long bulb exposures (exposures longer than 30 seconds) can be controlled with this single cable.

Nikon

Because of the relatively long flange-to-focal-plane distance on the Nikon cameras, few lenses from other manufacturers can be used because they will not reach infinity focus with an adapter.
You must use an infrared remote with some of the Nikon cameras such as the D40x, D40, D50 and D70. They do not have a plug for a hard-wired remote shutter release at all. This can be quite inconvenient. The Nikon infra-red, while inexpensive at $17, only has one button that triggers the shutter on the camera once, and must be used from in front of the camera where the IR sensor is located.
The latest Nikon Digital cameras, such as the D300, D3, D80 and D200 do have a hard-wired release plug. Nikon offers the MC-36 Multi-Function Remote for $130 with the proprietary Nikon plug for the high-end Nikon cameras such as the D300, D3, D100, D200 D1 and D2 series. It is very similar to the Canon TC-80N3.

There are much less expensive Chinese clones of the Nikon MC-36 also available. Go to Ebay and search for "Aputure Timer Remote" or DSLRBaby "Remote Timer Control".

If you already have a significant investment in Nikon Lenses you can save money by going with a Nikon DSLR and not having to replace all of your lenses. Many photographers have been loyal Nikon users for years. For these photographers, sticking with Nikon may save them a lot of money if they would have to replace an extensive collection of lenses. Just about every Nikon F series lens ever made will work on the latest DSLR bodies (with a couple of exceptions). Unlike Canon, Nikon did not change their lens mount when they went to autofocus lenses. Not all functions, such as autofocus will work on all of the Nikon DSLR bodies however.
Some Nikon entry-level cameras, such as the D60, D40 and D40x, will only autofocus with AF-S and AF-I Nikkor lenses. These cameras do not have an autofocus motor built into the camera body. They require an autofocus motor in the lens. Other lenses can be used on these bodies, but you will have to focus manually. This is not really a problem if you are shooting through a telescope however.
Nikons must use an inconvenient "mode 3" work around to acquire true raw files from the Nikon DLSR cameras, documented on Christian Buil's web page. This appears to be true even for Nikon's latest top-of-the-line D3 camera as documented here.
Nikon apparently applies a mathematical median blurring filter to their images (in addition to the low-pass filter in front of the sensor) after the in-camera dark frame subtraction for built in noise-reduction. This occurs even before the raw image is written to the file. To work around this and get a true raw file, it is necessary to physically turn the camera off during the in-camera dark frame acquisition. This is called the "mode-3" workaround. This work-around will make it difficult to automate the acquisition of multiple light frames which is the usual method of imaging with a DSLR for a dim astrophoto subject. Or, you can just live with this extra blurring from the median filter.

Nikon is also apparently truncating low-level signal during the digital-to-analog conversion performed by the electronics. See Christian Buil's Nikon D3 analysis. Emil Martinec reports that Nikon is doing the same thing to the D300. This is probably not really be a serious concern since most of this low level signal may be noise.
Nikon raw NEF files are not truly lossless in the Nikon D70. See Christian Buil's D70 vs 10D comparison page and also the discussion on Fazal Majid's weblog. Again, this is probably not a serious problem since the compression scheme seems to be very efficiently applied. Newer models offer user selectable options for lossy compressed, lossless compressed, and uncompressed raw NEF files.
Nikon's latest generation of cameras, such as the D3 and D300 can also be controlled with a single USB2 cable. However, Nikon software will still not allow bulb exposures (exposures longer than 30 seconds). A separate bulb cable with a proprietary Nikon plug must be used in addition to the USB2 cable to automate an astrophotography imaging session.

Honestly, today's camera models from both Nikon and Canon are very low-noise, the most important thing for long-exposure deep-sky astrophotography. If you get a camera model with Live View, you won't go wrong.

Nowadays, the quality of images produces with current generation DSLR models is more dependant on the skill of the astrophotographer than on the camera.




ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY / MILKY WAY PHOTOGRAPHY – HOW TO CATCH THE STARS IN YOUR DSLRS : http://blog.uniquephoto.com/astropho...in-your-dslrs/

[Manfred M]

A strange posting Myrah - when I see all kinds of references to obsolete cameras, I wonder why the detailed descriptions of cameras that are unlikely to be of much interest to people doing astrophotography today, especially with numerous more modern ones with significantly better performance characteristics?

The Nikon D60, D40 and D40x are long gone as is the D70. The D300, D3, D80 and D200 are rather ancient as well, although I know a few people that are shooting the D3 and D300.

[TrishBJ]

Hi John,
Dave's comments are spot on. My husband Mike and I are keen astrophotographers. What type of camera is best depends on what type of objects your friend wants to photograph. For the moon and planets, a fast video camera is usually the best, taking thousands of frames and keeping the very best ones that happen to fall during moments of perfect atmospheric clarity. Photographing the sun requires specialised equipment.
A DSLR will work with a dozen or so of the brightest and most popular deep sky targets, but, after that, for nebulae and galaxies, a dedicated CCD camera cooled to say -30 degrees celcius is required. To photograph faint targets, deep stacks of multiple exposures of at least 10 minutes (we use 60 minutes) are required. For faint and difficult objects, shorter exposures on a DSLR are overwhelmed by 'readout' noise, and longer exposures are overwhelmed by dark current and dark current noise. Your friend may find that the cost of something like a D810a is not so very different to a dedicated, cooled, astrocamera.
Thus a DSLR is a good place to begin, but if your friend want to pursue astrophotography, they may find that they soon want to move on to a dedicated astrocamera. All telescope companies will supply adaptors for DSLRs and will have a wide range of dedicated CCD cameras.
Thousands of astrophotos taken with DSLRs can be seen at the images section of www.iceinspace.com.au and your friend may find this website helpful. Our work can be seen at www.placidus-observatory.com.
We wish your friend the best of luck in his endeavours. It's a most fascinating field to pursue though it can become expensive!
cheers,
Trish

[TrishBJ]

Forgot to say....your friend should look around for an astronomy club with an astroimaging group. The experience and hands-on advice of the other members will be invaluable.

Trish