Hello guys,
I've been bothered by a question for quite some time now and I always felt dumb asking, but now I'll spit it out:
I never had or used a cooled CCD camera, although I thought about buying one more than once. But I never decided to do it because
(1) I was shocked by the price of even the crappiest cooled CCD.
(2) I already possessed a 6+ megapixel DSLR and heard that I could do something with it even in the field of astrophotography, with some limitations that my budget constraints made very acceptable.
So my question is why the major manufacturers of digital imaging devices (Nikon, Canon, Fuji and so on) are offering DSLR with large CCDs (6+megapixels) with a more or less affordable price, while the same amount of money will buy you only the smallest insignificant cooled monochrome CCD? Is it possible that the incredible price differential is due only to the cooling system? What else is there that I don't know about? I would understand a 20-30% difference on the same CCD size, but we are talking of double or even more!
Unless I'm totally wrong (which is very likely, being new to this hobby) it seems to me that the cooled CCD manufacturers are over-exploiting a niche of the digital imaging market, i.e. us, amateur astronomers.
I believe that the people at Sbig or Apogee are extremely unhappy (and if what I write above is true, deservedly so) to see that some high end DSLR are beginning to produce results that are comparable to the ones obtained by some cooled CCD cameras. I also believe, furthermore, that buying a small monochrome cooled CCD camera today may not be the wisest choice, given specific budget constraints.
I hope someone will join in and tell me I'm wrong, so I can buy that damned cooled CCD camera and stop just thinking about it!
Ciao to all of you gentlemen.
Gianluca
I've been bothered by a question for quite some time now and I always felt dumb asking, but now I'll spit it out:
I never had or used a cooled CCD camera, although I thought about buying one more than once. But I never decided to do it because
(1) I was shocked by the price of even the crappiest cooled CCD.
(2) I already possessed a 6+ megapixel DSLR and heard that I could do something with it even in the field of astrophotography, with some limitations that my budget constraints made very acceptable.
So my question is why the major manufacturers of digital imaging devices (Nikon, Canon, Fuji and so on) are offering DSLR with large CCDs (6+megapixels) with a more or less affordable price, while the same amount of money will buy you only the smallest insignificant cooled monochrome CCD? Is it possible that the incredible price differential is due only to the cooling system? What else is there that I don't know about? I would understand a 20-30% difference on the same CCD size, but we are talking of double or even more!
Unless I'm totally wrong (which is very likely, being new to this hobby) it seems to me that the cooled CCD manufacturers are over-exploiting a niche of the digital imaging market, i.e. us, amateur astronomers.
I believe that the people at Sbig or Apogee are extremely unhappy (and if what I write above is true, deservedly so) to see that some high end DSLR are beginning to produce results that are comparable to the ones obtained by some cooled CCD cameras. I also believe, furthermore, that buying a small monochrome cooled CCD camera today may not be the wisest choice, given specific budget constraints.
I hope someone will join in and tell me I'm wrong, so I can buy that damned cooled CCD camera and stop just thinking about it!
Ciao to all of you gentlemen.
Gianluca
www.amun-ra.org
Solar Imaging Website
