What camera should I buy for night photography

dom44 · Jan 4, 2015

Hi Everyone,

I'm not much of a photographer and I currently use a bridge camera (The fujifilm HS50 exr).
I go into the back country a lot and would like to start taking some pictures of the milky way. Unfortunately even in manual mode my camera simply can't take a decent night sky photo.
I figure its time for me to get a proper DSLR and learn it.
There are however so many options out there and every blog I read seems to suggest very expensive cameras +lens to do such photography.
I would like to start off with something cheap, maybe even 2nd hand but has a decent enough quality that would keep me encouraged to use it. Do you guys have any suggestions on what camera and lens I should be looking for?

Thank you.

dennybeall · Jan 4, 2015

Low light photography and star pictures are two different things I think. Taking pictures in low light takes fast glass and good tripods while star pictures, judging from posts I see here and on Nikonians.org, takes some specific equipment and skills. I would look at some astronomy sites to get an idea of what's needed.

jsecordphoto · Jan 4, 2015

You leaning toward nikon or canon? What is your budget? I take a lot of milky way photos, I can lead you in the right direction.

Nevermore1 · Jan 4, 2015

You don't mention what your budget is. May want to look at the Canon 6Da if you are looking at getting something for serious astrophotography. I'm sure there's tons of other stuff out there as well. Whatever you go with FF will most likely be your best bet.

TCampbell · Jan 4, 2015

Astrophotography is very different and has many special considerations.

90% of the normal matter in the universe is composed of Hydrogen atoms. This means many deep-space structures are glowing specifically in the Hydrogen emission lines... of which the Hydrogen alpha line is the strongest. Unfortunately the sensors in a typical camera are designed to mimic the sensitivity of the human eye, which is mostly sensitive to the greens in the middle of the spectrum and less sensitive to the blues and reds. As such, just in front of the imaging sensor on the inside of every digital camera there's a filter. That filter trims light emission in a way intended to mimic the eye... which means roughly 80% of the hydrogen alpha light is rejected and that makes for extra-long exposure times when doing astrophotography.

You can use a typical camera (any camera with a "bulb" setting and manual focus would work) EXCEPT you'd need to run extra-long exposures. Exposure times are already long enough and tracking for several minutes on end can be a bit of a challenge (if tracking is off then the whole image is blurred.) The long exposure also generates sensor heat and sensor heat generates "noise".

Astro-imagers will either use special cameras that don't have filters at all (they use a filter-wheel to dial-in the filtering they want... typically R, G, B, and Luminance ... or they might go for narrowband filtering (Ha, Hb, OIII, etc.)

A lot of imagers will buy a normal (usually "used") DSLR and then modify the camera (The Gary Honis website has instructions on how to do this with a lot of Canon models: ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY & DIGITAL IMAGING by Gary Honis )

You can also buy a DSLR specifically pre-modified for astro-imaging. The Canon 60Da is currently the only DSLR on the market that does this (Canon replaces the normal filter in the camera with a special filter optimized for astro-imaging... but this means that if you use the camera for normal terrestrial photography then you'll get ESPECIALLY WARM images (lots of reds) -- though you an "white balance" that out.)

The other consideration is that imagers use the AC power supply which is optional for most cameras. When you buy a Canon 60Da, it actually includes the AC power adapter (normally that's a separate accessory for any other camera). They do this because astro-imagers typically take LOTS of sub-frames... e.g. I might take 16 "lights" at 4 minutes each (64 minutes of exposure time), plus a minimum of 8 "darks" at the same ISO and duration (32 minutes of exposure time), plus a bunch of bias frames, and possibly even a bunch of flat frames (those can be faster.) But this means I'm probably working the camera almost non-stop for 2 hours of image just to capture ONE final image. You can imagine how that'd kill your batteries in a hurry.

Since the image times are long, you'll need a way to "track" the sky as it moves. To do this, you'll need a tracking mount.

There are trackers designed to be used with ordinary photography tripods:

1. Losmandy StarLapse system (this is my personal favorite... this company makes VERY high quality products.)
2. AstroTrac
3. Vixen Polarie
4. iOptron SkyTracker

These are motorized heads that mount to a regular tripod, but you align them so that their axis of rotation is pointed at the north celestial pole (so it's parallel with Earth's axis of rotation). That means that as Earth rotates from West to East (yes... West to East... I did not get that backwards), the tracking head rotates at the same speed... but from East to West. This means any object being imaged will remain stationary in your field of view (as long as you did a good job aligning the tracking head when you set it up.)

You can also mount the camera to any motorized equatorial telescope mount (such as an iOptron SmartEQ or a Celstron Advanced VX mount.) but these will be heavier to transport and more expensive.

It is MUCH easier to image in wide field (wide angle of view) then long telephoto (narrow angle of view) because the narrower the angle of view, the more critical it is to have accurate tracking (you get to be slightly sloppy when the angle of view is wide). As you get better.. you can up the ante by using longer focal length lenses.

While I normally don't care what brand someone uses for their DSLR (I don't think it's very important), the support for Canon cameras in astro-imaging is HUGE. Just about everything supports Canon. Support for any other brand is extremely weak. You'd think support for Nikon would be about as common... but it's not.

There is one other nuance that I encountered while helping a camera club image the moon at our observatory... the auto-focus won't work on stars... they're not bright enough. So you'll need to manually focus the image. To focus, we'd normally pop the camera into "live view" mode, crank the magnification to 10x, point to a bright star, and then work on focusing that star as best as possible using manual focus (I prefer to use something called a Bahtinov Focusing Mask... but that's another thread.) On any Canon I've used, this is fairly easy because you can just max out the ISO and shutter duration and the live-view amplifies the image to "simulate" your exposure. When I did this with the camera club's Nikon cameras, I could not get this to work. The consensus was that most Nikon cameras don't support this feature. This made it EXTREMELY difficult to focus the cameras. Hopefully Nikon will add this feature. (Canon and Sony both support it, but I don't recommend Sony because if you think it's hard to find astro-imaging software that supports Nikon... wait until you try to find software that supports Sony. Support is pretty much non-existent.)

So the top DSLR for astro-imaging would be the Canon 60Da.
Below that a "used" Rebel (something you're not afraid to void the warranty when you modify it) are popular.
Ignore any features of the body & focus system, metering, auto-focus points, etc. etc. etc. You won't use ANY of those features when doing astro-photography (no metering... no auto-focus, etc.) so it just doesn't matter. You basically are buying the camera for the sensor and the ability to take pictures in "bulb" mode (and they all do that). Although an articulated LCD screen is VERY nice because the camera is going to be pointing up ... no articulated LCD screen means you'll be on your knees down on the ground trying to use the camera. That makes the swing-out articulated LCD screen a very welcome feature. Apart from that, older/used low end bodies are just fine.

Buckster · Jan 4, 2015

TCampbell really knows his stuff when it comes to this subject (and many others), so you should consider his advice VERY valuable.

I've never done it myself, but I seem to recall reading quite a bit about image stacking instead of tracking mechanisms and long exposures. I wonder if Tim could address that?

jsecordphoto · Jan 4, 2015

I'm gonna guess he is looking to do landscape astrophotography, not so much deep sky object type stuff.

dom44 · Jan 4, 2015

Wow! I got to say I never expected to receive such a detailed and informative response, thank you so much for taking the time to provide me with such great information.

jsecordphoto: Yes you are right, my aim is landscape astrophotography. I had a look at your website, and your photos in the nigh section are exactly the kind of images I am looking to take. Your photos are absolutely brilliant btw, I wish I had the skills to take such great photos.
I don't have a fixed budget. If there is an option that is cheap I can get it right away, if not I will just save up and buy it in a short while. With that being said I would like to start with a cheap option that would be consider decent for an amateur.

TCampbell: Thank you so much for posting such an informative response. I think I have learnt more about astrophotography from your one post than any website I have read.

Thanks to everyone else for your replies as well.

jsecordphoto · Jan 4, 2015

I had the canon 6d and tokina 16-28 for all my nightscape work, just sold all my canon stuff for a nikon d750 and will be getting another Tokina this week hopefully. The 6d is a great camera but I got a TON of hot pixels doing long exposures, 25-30 seconds was fine but I do multiple minute foreground exposures as well. If I had an unlimited budget, I'd get the nikon d810 and nikon 14-24. But for much less money there are still good options.

I would definitely suggest a full frame camera. Some newer crop sensors do decent at night, but full frame will handle noise much better. Canon 6d, Nikon d610/750/800/800e are all great cameras. For a lens, lots of people use the Rokinon 14mm, I had one (a sharp copy) but I didn't like it too much. I absolutely love my tokina 16-28, which isn't super expensive at around $650. Some people may suggest just getting a crop body and the tokina 11-16, which isn't bad, but if you can afford to buy full frame I would. You'll quickly outgrow and want better performance if you buy crop- I know I did. I only started shooting at night a little over a year ago.....you should see my first attempts. They were truly horrible, but I was hooked.

I can answer more questions tomorrow, but it's been a long day traveling around selling off my gear and buying new stuff....I'm going to bed

petrochemist · Jan 5, 2015

Whilst I personally wouldn't buy a Sony I hear their A7 is particularly good in low light situations. (It get high praise from users of the Pentax K5 which itself is miles ahead of any of my cameras.

The kit needed for astrophotography depends very much on the style your after. Landscape shots with stars just need a tripod, wideish lens & good light sensitivity (and a location with clear unpoluted skies!). For me the location is probably more of an issue than the light sensitivity :apologetic:

Deep sky shots will require a motorised telescope....

There are ways to stack multiple exposures that reduce noise issues. Most of the excellent starscapes I've seen on flickr etc. probably use stacking.

TCampbell · Jan 5, 2015

petrochemist said:
There are ways to stack multiple exposures that reduce noise issues. Most of the excellent starscapes I've seen on flickr etc. probably use stacking.

Astrophotography involves a number of techniques to get rid of the noise. It's a bit tricky because faint stars can look an awaful lot like "noise".

We take lots of imgages to stack... it's a poisson relationship where the ability to knock down the noise is equal to the square root of the number of shots you took. So if I take 4 shots I can get rid of twice as much noise as if I just take 2. But if I take 9 shots, I can improve it by a factor of 3. At 16 shots it's a factor of 4, etc. Most imagers claim that somewhere around 20-25 shots it's diminishing returns.... it takes too long to get the extra shots to improve the noise by a tiny bit more.

Also we take "darks". Darks are taken at the same time (so the temperature will be the same) as the lights and using the same shutter duration and same ISO. BUT... the shutter isn't opened (leave the lens cap on.) This allows the camera to take an image of "just the noise". The image integration software can use this data to determine how much "noise" is in the image as it processes and can also detect "pattern" noise.

Sometimes they "dither" the image. Dithering (in the case of AP) means they'll slightly nudge the mount by a few pixels between each shot. This causes the real stars to move slightly, but the pattern noise will stay in the same spot. This allows the computer to figure out where the pattern noise really is in the image (it wont confuse a dim star for pattern noise.)

Then you use integration and stacking software to combine the whole thing. Deep-Sky Stacker is free. I use a program called PixInsight (not free... I think it was around $220 at the time (it's priced at €171).

Buckster · Jan 6, 2015

Interesting related article:

How to Avoid Star Trails by Following the '500 Rule'

TCampbell · Jan 6, 2015

Buckster said:
Interesting related article:

How to Avoid Star Trails by Following the '500 Rule'

You'll find a lot of numeric values... I've seen 600, 500, 450... but the most common by far is the "Rule of 600". I personally use 600 for a full-frame camera and close inspection reveals no star trails. For crop-frame cameras you should divide the baseline (in my case 600) by the crop factor of your camera sensor.

My biggest problem isn't the star trails... it's the @#$@! "light domes" from excessive light pollution of the cities and towns. It seems no matter how far in the country I try to go, I'm always cursed with that. You really need to do this on moonless nights and well away from any cities or towns.

jsecordphoto · Jan 7, 2015

I use the rule of 450ish lol. Based on the rule of 500 I can do about a 31 second exposure with my 16mm lens without trailing. I round that down to 30, which is fine for web use but on larger prints I notice some trailing. So I stick with 25 seconds