The first day of Summer and shortest night of the year has arrived! How I hate nights that have clouds! And I hate nights where it's still light at 9:30 ! Tonight is a double whammy! :) So it goes.
My part of New Mexico has had a long and incredibly cloudy spell...nearly two months. By all indications the monsoon season came very early this year. So I've had lots of time to anguish. And spend money on new gear. A simple fact: at my age, I'm not inclined to wait years before I try to peek at what's over the next mountain. Thus my desire to test modified DSLRs and dedicated CCD imagers.
The upgrades are two. A Hap Griffin modified Canon 350D. More on that camera later, after I have a chance to acquire some photons. And an SBIG ST-2000XCM single shot color camera. A full run down on the SBIG ST-2000XCM can be viewed here.
Believe it or not, I finally caught a night to test the camera! Results will follow in subsequent posts. My initial impressions are: the single shot XCM is one fabulous camera. The self-guide feature alone makes the camera worth the $! (One disappointment: the camera came to me with a big finger print smack in the middle of the optical window. SBIG has not seen fit to offer so much as an apology.)
Two facts convinced me to buy this particular camera. Fact one: I'm not ready to shell out $8K or 9K for the high end, 35mm frame SBIG camera.
Fact two: the image at the top of the page indicates that the single shot XCM performs at a qualitative level across the RGB spectrum to satisfy all but the fussiest of imagers. Maybe a monochrome multi-filter camera awaits me in the future. But for now I'm a "one shot kinda guy!"
Max
No comments:
Post a Comment