beginner camera

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Nikolaos Bafitis avatar
hello, I am looking for a camera that is beginner friendly and can be used for both astrophotography and photography in general, I am also looking for a reasonable price and some advice on  what to get.
Mark Germani avatar
Hi Nikolaos!

I started with the Canon 600D/T3i. It’s a great DSLR and a lot of folks on this site use it. It’s an older camera and you should be able to find a used one for a great price, and you can even put some of the money you’ve saved into astro-modifying it in the future, so that it captures more hydrogen in nebulae.

CS,
Mark
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verticalmagic avatar
if you are looking for a DSLR an important thing for astrophotography is the sensitivity in the H-alpha region of the light spectrum, as red nebulae emit in that wavelength. Most DSLRs are equipped with a UV-IR cut filter that removes that wavelength, but it is possible to remove that filter and replace it with a filter transparent to H-alpha. I think it is possible to buy a used DSLR already astro-modified for around 100-200$, you can look for example at cloudy nights classifields (recently I sold mine there for that kind of price). If you already have a telescope with a good tracking mount the best is to have a dedicated cooled astrophotography camera but that is more expensive. You can browse images on astrobin to see what people are using. In the case of a dedicated astro camera you need to think carefully about the size and resolution of the sensor you want, as it is going to define a lot of things like the field of view (large sensor = wider field of view for the same telescope), and noise level (small pixels = more noise, also need sharper optics). There are a lot of youtube videos about DSLRs and astrophotography, for example the one of Nico Carver.
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Tony Gondola avatar
Since you want it for regular photography then a used DSLR is really the only choice and they can work well. I wouldn't sped money on modding it though. When you progress to the point that you care about Ha sensitivity, it will be time to upgrade to a true astrophotography camera. Keep the DSLR for vacation photos.
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Tobiasz avatar
My recommendation is the Canon 2000D(a), cheap, light, low read noise and very low dark current. My M33, M31 and Orion nebula in my gallery were mostly shot with the 2000D (+ other cameras in the mix) and those subs were clean. The 6D is sensitive with its big pixels and the Sony A6300 was also clean, because of the low noise. But still I got rid of the Sony because of their nasty star-eater noise reduction algorithm.
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