Testing Canon 7D

Thanks john, I'm still leaning towards the 5D and I have a canon 50mm F1.4 which takes great portraits with a 400D so I know it will be a huge step up
Just waiting for any feedback from astrophotographers out there who may have used the 5D.

Cracking images John! Loved the 7D when coupled with the Astrotrac. Great sensitivity compared to older DSLRs.

leaning towards the 5D

I've tried a 5D MKIII for some deepsky stuff and it's a pretty awesome jump up from (non-modded) aps-c. Just set the ISO to 12800 for framing and back down to 1600 or 3200 afterwards (yep 3200 is very usable). There are 3 big cons though - i) it's a bit frightening having a camera worth that much hanging off a scope ii) have found full frame very unforgiving on telescopes without a large cone and good flattener iii) you really begin to miss the crop factor when using long camera lenses on the night sky - but one can always crop

TrevorDurity wrote: Cracking images John! Loved the 7D when coupled with the Astrotrac. Great sensitivity compared to older DSLRs.

leaning towards the 5D

I've tried a 5D MKIII for some deepsky stuff and it's a pretty awesome jump up from (non-modded) aps-c. Just set the ISO to 12800 for framing and back down to 1600 or 3200 afterwards (yep 3200 is very usable). There are 3 big cons though - i) it's a bit frightening having a camera worth that much hanging off a scope ii) have found full frame very unforgiving on telescopes without a large cone and good flattener iii) you really begin to miss the crop factor when using long camera lenses on the night sky - but one can always crop

Thanks Trevor. I'm sorry I didn't wait a few months and pick up a 6D. It's supposed to be very good with noise levels but the 7D is a great camera. I now have a Vixen Polarie. Hope to finally test it this weekend from a semi dark site but the weather looks bad again.