{"id":6793,"date":"2015-02-11T21:13:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T11:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=6793"},"modified":"2015-02-11T21:23:59","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T11:23:59","slug":"nikons-new-d810a-astrophotography-dslr-why-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=6793","title":{"rendered":"Nikon&#8217;s new D810A astrophotography dSLR &#8211; why bother?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nikon has just announced a special version of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=photo:nikond810\" target=\"_blank\">Nikon D810 full frame dSLR<\/a>, the D810A designed purely for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=photo:astrophotography\" target=\"_blank\">astrophotography<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>So what is different about it?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>infrared filter has been modified to allow the H-alpha 656nm wavelengths of light to better image certain nebulae<\/li>\n<li>additional features to support long exposure photography:\n<ul>\n<li>Long Exposure M mode that provides selectable shutter speeds from 4 to 900 sec (15 minutes) &#8211; similar to the Olympus Timed BULB mode<\/li>\n<li>a virtual exposure preview in bulb and time settings, similar to <a title=\"omd:live_time\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=omd:live_time\">Olympus Live Time mode<\/a><\/li>\n<li>a dark frame subtraction mode (called \u2018astro noise reduction\u2019 in Raw) &#8211; and I thought all cameras had this already!<\/li>\n<li>red virtual horizon, so as not to interfere with night vision<\/li>\n<li>ability to dim the viewfinder\u2019s OLED<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It will set you back $US3800 for the body only.<\/p>\n<h2>Is it worth it?<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Maybe to some astrophotographers who are just into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=photo:astroscapes\" target=\"_blank\">Milky Way landscape shots<\/a> but really keen astrophotographers need more than this in an astro camera, such as:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>cooling of the sensor<\/li>\n<li>no SLR mirror to cause camera shake (the mirror is pretty much useless for astrophotography anyway)<\/li>\n<li>electronic view finder with Live Boost (as with Olympus OM-D cameras)<\/li>\n<li>WiFi full remote control to avoid touching the camera and causing shake<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>These keen astrophotographers would be looking more to modifications of cameras such as performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralds.net\/cam\/?p=6070\" target=\"_blank\">CentralDS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For instance they will take apart your Canon EOS 5D Mark III and totally transform it by removing the mirror housing, changing the IR cut filter, adding in a cooling system for the sensor to keep thermal noise as low as possible, adding in a drop-in filter system, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps a better suited camera is a mirrorless camera, and so this company will also modify your <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralds.net\/cam\/?p=7911\" target=\"_blank\">Sony A7s mirrorless full frame camera<\/a> and turn it into a dedicated cooled astro camera with IR filter replaced for under $US1000 which should give far better results than an uncooled Nikon D810A:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"modified Sony A7s\" src=\"http:\/\/www.centralds.net\/cam\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/a7s-b1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>and this is what happens to thermal noise when you use a cooled camera vs un-modified camera:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"thermal noise\" src=\"http:\/\/www.centralds.net\/cam\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/a7s_compare_level30.jpg\" width=\"600\/\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nikon has just announced a special version of the Nikon D810 full frame dSLR, the D810A designed purely for astrophotography. So what is different about it? infrared filter has been modified to allow the H-alpha 656nm wavelengths of light to better image certain nebulae additional features to support long exposure photography: Long Exposure M mode [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[93,48],"class_list":["post-6793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cameras","category-photography","tag-astrophotography","tag-nikon"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}