Nikon's D810A is the first full-frame DSLR designed for astrophotography

[Mike]

Mark might be interested in this.....

Nikon's D810A is the first full-frame DSLR designed for astrophotography

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/9/8010123/nikon-d810a-announcement-specs-price-astrophotography

[Kenny]

Bargain! 

[MarkS]

Interesting but very expensive. 

Also here:  http://www.dpreview.com/articles/5786202951/nikon-d810a-astrophotography-camera

One of the comments notes that the D810 has a black offset of 800 units so the usual Nikon black clipping should not be a problem.

[RobertM]

Yes quite expensive but at least they seem to have thought about it more than Canon did with their 20Da and latterly 60Da although the devil is in the detail.

Robert

[Mike]

It is pricey. But it depends on how it would stack up to a cooled CCD/CMOS astro camera of a similar size. We will have to wait until images made by this camera start appearing on the forums.

[Kenny]

Stupid money for an astro dslr and the risk of having it out collecting dew on cold winter nights. Crazy!

[Mike]

The Nikons are completely waterproof. I have used mine in the rain before on several occasions.

[Kenny]

The Nikons are completely waterproof. I have used mine in the rain before on several occasions.

I did not know that.

[Mac]

Do we know if they have stopped processing the raw images prior to them being saved or do they still apply their processing to the raw image, thus making it not a true raw,
as opposed to Canon who have always give us a true raw.

Love the quote from the page

Nikon warns against using the D810A for general photography, as subjects rooted to our planet may be rendered with an excessively red cast.

No Shi- Sherlock
Er, just fit an IR filter to the front lens element. Sorted.

Mac.

[Mac]

Found some examples apparently.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kentkc/15870307413


https://www.flickr.com/photos/kentkc/16302758408


Mac.

[Kenny]

Love the quote from the page

Nikon warns against using the D810A for general photography, as subjects rooted to our planet may be rendered with an excessively red cast.

No Shi- Sherlock
Er, just fit an IR filter to the front lens element. Sorted.

Thread Ambush: Is it as simple as that? I could mod my Canon 450D and still use it for normal photography?

[Carole]

More $ than many CCD cameras.

Carole

[Mac]

Thread Ambush: Is it as simple as that? I could mod my Canon 450D and still use it for normal photography?

Yup.

Your sensor in the camera is sensitive far in to the IR and UV wavelengths.
To get round this they fit a hot filter, which blocks all uv and IR, normally the fliter you end up cleaning to remove the dust ect..

When its Astro modded you remove the filter and replace it with quartz glass (or whatever its made of)

This does three things,
1) allows the camera to take images far in to the IR
2) Allows the camera to take images far in to the UV
3) Screws up your autofocus as you have changed the thickness of the glass and most auto focuses work on the reflected image from the top of the sensor.

So any image you take will be redder, to get around this you can fit a IR filter on the front of the lens to remove the Higher IR wavelengths, these filters are CLEAR
as opposed to the IR Pass filters which are BLACK and allow you to take true IR images by only allowing IR through, white grass black skies ect.

Heres the fun part, stick a IR pass filter on, and use live view and you can still see!!

What it wont do is change the auto focus, so you can either manually focus (will always focus) or use a larger depth of field (wont always work though).

Mac.

[MarkS]

More $ than many CCD cameras.

More sensor area than almost all CCD cameras!

[Mike]

The sensor size is 35.9 mm x 24.0 mm which is huge.