Asi533mc pro vs Asi2600mc pro (duo?)

Well, FOV aside, you’re talking about 9MP vs 24MP.
I have a 533 and will likely also get the 2600 at some point if I can.
533 is great, nothing to complain about, but it’s somewhat limited if what you plan is (for example in my case) printing your captures at times…

Image scale is the same so it is really down to FOV. Performance-wise I think the IMX571 has a slight edge but not the main selling point. If you want easiness of installation and of setting up then the IMX533 is to be preferred. If you want more of an all-arounder then the IMX571 is your best bet. I have both. Get something with a properly designed (and rear operated) tilt-plate built in, saves you a lot of grief down the road…

andrea tasselli · Apr 8, 2026, 09:18 AM

Image scale is the same so it is really down to FOV. Performance-wise I think the IMX571 has a slight edge but not the main selling point. If you want easiness of installation and of setting up then the IMX533 is to be preferred. If you want more of an all-arounder then the IMX571 is your best bet. I have both. Get something with a properly designed (and rear operated) tilt-plate built in, saves you a lot of grief down the road…

Thanks. I’m guessing a tilt plate is more critical for the 2600 than the 533?

Basically what Andrea said but budget permitting I see no reason why you wouldn’t go for the 2600. You can think of the 533 as literally just a cropped version of the 2600. Any shot you can get with the 533 you can get with the 2600, with the addition of another 15mp.

I don’t know what the rest of your setup looks like, but, in my opinion, moving to the ASI2600 would probably be one of the most cost effective upgrades you could take. I would assume the APS-C sized sensor is fine for your gear, but if you went bigger, you would probably have to make a big investment in the rest of your optical chain. What the other users said about composition is very true since you’ll have a rectangular FoV (which our brains really like) and almost 3x more sky to play with. Also the 16 vs 14 bit ADC is a benefit. (Edited for correction) The e-/ADU at gain 100 is 1 for the 533 and ,25 for the 2600 showing that, electronically, you have higher resolution samples on faint data. However, this resolution is below the read noise of 1.5 e- for the 533 and 1.3 e- for the 2600. So, only marginally better.

I made the same upgrade a year ago, and it made a big difference for me. The only caveat I would give is that you might bite the bullet and go mono. It does incur the cost of filters and wheel etc., but you may end up there anyway and wonder why you still have your OSC.

As far as the Duo goes, it works great in broadband, but, if you put a narrowband filter in front of it, you may have to increase your guiding exposure so much that it becomes ineffective at longer FL.

I have both now. My 1st Astro camera was ASI 533 MC Pro and recently upgraded to ASI 2600 MC Pro. Agree to most of the views expressed above. My personal experience using the two in last couple of weeks is

1. The IMX533 sensor is 1 inch square and the image quality is about 9 MP whereas the IMX 571 is a APS-C size sensor with 26MP image size. The image quality is way superior and good for distant objects

2. The ASI 2600 MC is relatively quite heavy and almost double the weight of 533 MC and hence overall weight of the gear needs to be managed.

3. During Live stacking the image size being larger the ASI Air takes relatively longer time to stack but is not a constraint if the exposures are longer say 120-180 sec or more.

Going for a Duo is dependent on your main image Train as not all Scopes are best suited for OAG and Duo sensor camera. Assume you have done that analysis earlier.

All the best !

Chris Seabrooke · Apr 8, 2026 at 12:28 PM

Hans Roos · Apr 8, 2026 at 09:33 AM

I have both. The 533 performs well.

It was my first real astro camera after using my old Nikon D300 for two years.

The difference was amazing, although the FOV is a lot smaller.

Then I bought the 2600 MC duo. It’s nice to have a bigger FOV.

Because I like to capture galaxies, I also tend to crop my pictures (they are often rather small..)

The image scale is exactly the same, but with the 2600 there is more room to change the composition.

The real difference for me is the built-in extra sensor for guiding. I removed my guide scope and never used it again!

Followed the same path, 533 then 2600 duo. Goodbye guidescope😁

And in case you’re wondering what you do with the asi 174mini you don’t use for guiding …📷 IMG_8291.jpeg

Mark Worthington · Apr 8, 2026 at 01:06 PM

Thanks to everyone who's replied so far. I have noted with interest how many of you chose to get an Asi2600 after getting the 533. Makes me wonder if it’s best to jump straight to it, and bypass guidescope and ideas of getting a nodded dslr + 533 combo, which would be pushing towards a similar total. The mention of 16 bit vs 14 bit was noted.

Hey Mark! You will need M48 piping all the way from scope to sensor pair and at long fl (C11 2800, 1764 with fr) you will have to bin the guide scope of the duo. For me it works fine but with an M42, T2 anywhere in the train it’ll block the guide scope.

I use it with my Hyperstar v4 as well and had an M 56 adapter made to cut out the vignetting of the 2600 main.

Just things to think about 😉

As a 585 user I have a little bit different point of view on this.

On bit depth. If you look at the graphs the 2600 the actual delivered dynamic range is just about the same. At a gain of 100 where HGC mode kicks in on both cameras the well depth is the same. This is where you will probably use but cameras the most because it gives you the lowest read noise in combination with almost the full dynamic range. To get the full well depth on either camera you would have to shoot at a gain of zero but at that gain read noise really goes up. This would only make sense if you are in the habit of shooting really long subs.

Since both cameras are delivering basically the same pixel level performance and the pixels are the same size you can eliminate that part of the argument and just look at field of view with your optics, cost, complexity, processing time and data storage requirements.

On FOV, if you are going to be cropping the 2600 most of the time it really doesn’t make sense to me to carry the cost, processing time and overhead verses composing your shots properly with the smaller sensor in the first place. You could take the money saved and get a rotator which would help a lot. I would really take a hard look at the vast number of objects out there and the needed FOV. The vast majority of objects are rather small, especially when you’re talking galaxies.

As someone who has gotten great prints from a 585 I really don’t agree with the idea that you need the larger chip for printing when the resolution is the same for both sensors. Yes if you make two 16×20 prints of say M51 at the full FOV of each sensor, the 2600 would look cleaner and sharper but that’s only because it’s enlarged less. If you made M51 the same size in both prints there would be no difference.

On the Duo, I would avoid it. It’s larger and heavier and brings in the single point of failure possibility for both imaging and guiding. It’s one of those everything is great until it isn’t things.

One point that might be very important depending on local conditions is that the 2600 has an internal dew heater, the 533 doesn’t.

Overall, unless you are really stuck on having a wide FOV and absolutely need an internal dew heater, I think the 533 is a better choice. In fact, with the money saved I would strongly suggest putting that into a mono setup.

I have both and quite a few telescopes and reducers. The 2600 is better for me on wider field targets with large nebulas. The 533 with more of a crop sensor is great for galaxies and smaller planetary Nebula when I wanna get close up with my Edge 8 or midsize refractor. The 533 also is a little easier to use. The pictures download much quicker and take up less space on computer and its lighter. The 533 also excels as a great planetary camera or a quick electronic assisted astronomy (EAA) camera to show off quick images to your friends or outreach as in lucky imaging using SharpCap or similar program. There both great cameras and im keeping both for now. If I ever decide to get into lrgb imaging, I would sell my 2600mc and buy a mono 2600 and keep my 533mc . I hope this helps.. Both are great .

If cost is not a major consideration then my recommendation would be the 2600mc (duo even better) because performance wise both cameras are same (full well capacity, noise are same). dynamic range of 2600mc is marginally better (unnoticeable for most DSO targets ).

Both have same pixel size, So if you just crop the 2600mc data to 3008×3008 pixels you would get result as achieved by a 533mc camera. Thus choosing 2600mc gives more freedom in selecting DSO targets - like if you see below FOV comparison, with 533mc I have to image M81 and M82 separately as I cannot fit them with 533 FOV. but with 2600mc I can fit both and could technically crop it to produce a result from 533mc. IMG_3124.PNG