Advice on buying a CCD

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tadywankenobi
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Advice on buying a CCD

Post by tadywankenobi » Mon Oct 08, 2012 10:42 pm

Hiya folks,

Planning on buying a Celestron 6 SE sometime in the next month or two. For the moment, I'll buy a T-Ring and use my DSLR to do some initial photography, but I'd like to think about in future buying a dedicated CCD for deep sky work. I'm au fait enough with programs like PhotoShop to know how to reconstitute a 3 channel monochrome image, so I'd like to go down that route with the CCD. My criteria is that it needs to be:

- monochrome
- no IR filter
- compatible with Mac*
- possibly fan cooled (I've seen that many of them already are, so not really a criteria)
- not cost more than €500

I'm not sure if my criteria are unreasonable or not. I've seen some amazing cameras online, but I've no idea as to which I should go for and most are way out of my budget. I've done extensive research on Mac software, and one coming up trumps is "Nebulosity", but this limits my buying options to fairly high end (and high price) cameras. Does anyone know any other good Mac image capture software? Ideally, I'd love to find something around €200 I could work with for a start, but I realise this may not be viable (and also a waste of €200 I could eventually put towards something else) so I'm willing to save a bit longer for better. I also realise I'll need to consider a full filter kit, but they're easier to get a grip on than the camera's themselves. Should I just bite the bullet, save for a lot longer and buy something in the €1000 - €1500 bracket? I'm impatient at the best of times!!!

*If the fact I use Mac is a stumbling block, I may consider getting a cheap, decent Windows netbook, but this would seem a bit excessive considering the number of machines I have here that are all Apple.

So there! Any help or advice would be much appreciated!!!

Cheers,

Tady

tadywankenobi
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 9:10 pm
Location: Quimper, France
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A right cat amongst the pidgeons...

Post by tadywankenobi » Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:01 am

So, I wrote an email to the guy who makes Nebulosity software about the cameras it supports, presuming it had something to do with driver availability. He wrote back and confirmed this, but he also included the following:

"I've given a few talks on "Astrophotography on a budget" and it can be done and done well. One of my favorite demos is to show 2 shots of M51 side by side. One is a bit better than the other, but not by a ton. I show how there is $49,000 difference in equipment between the two. Everyone all agrees though that Shot A is better than B. Shot A, of course, was done on about $1500 worth of gear.

First - we have the scope + mount. In this, think a lot about the focal length you can shoot at. If you're on a dedicated CCD, you may have 6-7 micron pixels. If on a DSLR, perhaps as small as 4. Let's take 6 as a starting point here and see that if you were to sample your sky at 1"/pixel you're looking at 1200 mm of focal length. This should be the longest you consider. I'd personally be looking more at 800 mm or even shorter. By far, my favorite instrument is only 400 mm. Going wider makes guiding easier and opens you up to lower end mounts as well. Getting an SCT down there, unless you're on a Hyperstar, is not really going ot happen. So, if AP is the goal, you're looking at things like an 8" f/5 or f/4 Newtonian with a Baader MPCC corrector. Inexpensive, but gets the job done for AP very, very well. You won't get better image quality out of an SCT for this. You can also look at a refractor + reducer / flattener / corrector. My main rig is a Borg 101 ED f/4 -- outside the budget but there are solid options to be had for less. But, pay careful attention to the combination of the scope + flattener / reducer / corrector.

Second, we have the camera. Really, for the price, nothing beats a Canon APS-sized DSLR. There is no better way to get a decent sized chip. You don't need to go to the higher end ones either. A base model, ideally modifying the IR filter at some point, will run great and there are some simply astounding shots taken by these. If monochrome / narrowband imaging is your game - great - get a cooled CCD. But to get your feet wet, grab the DSLR. You may stick with it for a long time as well."

I've spent the evening watching YouTube videos about stripping out the IR filter in Canon DSLR's (most documented) and drooling over HEQ5 mounts...

I think this is awesome advice and think it's the route I might go down. I actually know more about DSLR's than scopes (having sold em for yeeeeeeears and being a photographer) so this looks like solid advice. It's also good to see someone advocating the "less is more" approach, that a big rig is not necessarily going to get you better results for the available skies and equipment. Good advice for an enthusiastic beginner I think.

I don't know what to do now!!!

T

Frank Ryan
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Location: Ballycasey, Co. Clare

Post by Frank Ryan » Sat Oct 20, 2012 11:11 am

The absolute best quality for the price are the Imaging Source CCD cams.
I got one from them as a prize for the Starparty a few years back and they are super quality and almost exactly the same as the Atik cams.

What are you looking at photographing?
There are a lot of different cams for different targets?

Modded DSLR cams are great for deep sky stuff.
Some of the more expensive CCD cams are a waste of money as the
scope ? mount woukld have to match in quality / money.

For CCD imaging of the planets / moon to start with I'd suggest the Phillips SPC 900NC (tucam) - It's cheap as chips and works great - Damien Peach used this cam to start with!

you can still buy threm on ebay
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Philips-SPC900NC ... 0939467892

must be the old model though... as the new chip is not as sensitive.

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