Upcoming: Canon EOS Ra for Astrophotography

Email from Canon Imaging, announcing the EOS Ra, now available for preorder:

Haven't seen mention of it here, even though the email was sent November 7.

It's not really big news, even on other forums, there isn't much interest. Canon issues such a camera every seven years, and this way they get to try to keep the R in the spotlight.

Was not aware of the 7-year cycle; interesting.
Thanks for pointing it out.

I thought some of the astrophotographers here might find this interesting,
hence why I posted. I found it interesting just for the fact of a manufacturer
offering this as opposed to astro-togs having modifications done.

It would be far cheaper to just buy an R and send it to LivePixel or others to have it changed accordingly, I would think.

plus, if you had the filter removed from an eos R, you could use the adapter with EF lenses that takes an external filter. This way you could fit whatever filter you needed at the time - IR or normal fitted in seconds!

It is for an extremely niche audience. I mean few photographers are exclusively into astrophotography. So, few people are going to end up buying the Ra. It is amazing that Canon still manages to focus on niche audiences in the declining camera market and I am thankful for that, but obviously there is going to be less marketing spend on the Ra.

Alan Dyer is putting the Ra through its paces. It will be interesting to see how the it fares head to head against the D810A & as an upgrade to the 60Da.

https://amazingsky.net …ith-canons-eos-ra-camera/

https://www.flickr.com​/photos/amazingsky/491​33719088
https://www.flickr.com​/photos/amazingsky/490​22362397

nationalstore wrote in post #18965594
It is for an extremely niche audience. I mean few photographers are exclusively into astrophotography. So, few people are going to end up buying the Ra. It is amazing that Canon still manages to focus on niche audiences in the declining camera market and I am thankful for that, but obviously there is going to be less marketing spend on the Ra.

This is true. These "modified" dSLR sensors are just a small nudge towards being useful for deep space photography, they're still inefficient and uncooled.

Exclusive astrophotographers just get cooled CMOS sensors, both monochrome or color, with narrowband or RGB + HA filters. And these cost less than these dSLRs and are far, far better at this use.

I've always wondered why any of the big camera makers produce a dSLR like this and upcharge it. It's still not the right tool if your goal is astrophotography and is severely limited.

Very best,

Sorry to resurrect an older thread but since PhotoPlus Magazine just came out with a review of the Ra I thought it would be good to put out a couple thoughts on the camera.

I am mainly a solar imager (see my solar website https://www.solarhead.​net ) but I also do deepsky although not as much as others.

While the Ra as well as the 60Da look interesting they are not cooled and on long exposures that is very important. As a sensor heats up the noise ramps up. There is a company ZWO that makes various astro cameras with various chip sizes. At the top of their line are the APS-C and Full Frame CMOS cameras, the cooled versions in color run $1,200 to $1,500, the monochrome are cheaper, they also have CMOS cameras such as the ASI120 for under $200. They can be controlled with free software such as Sharpcap (I use this one) or Firecapture. For the Canon cameras there is a utility called "Backyard EOS" that runs on your laptop and allows all the controls you would get with a ZWO camera.
The biggest thing is that youi can get COOLED cameras, a must. I have both the ASI078 and ASI071, APS-C and Full frame respectively, both cooled. You can set them to what temp you want up to -45C below ambient temp, I usually run them at 0C (32 F) and when you touch them they are cold!

Now all that being said, with the options I use I HAVE to use a laptop or other PC with them, and cannot be used for regular photography they are very specialized. The 60Da or Ra or a modified 5D2 can be used on a tripod or with a star tracker without other gear, that can be a big thing.

A FINAL NOTE - There is another way to do astrophotography for minimal cash outlay and guaranteed dark skies. It is called SLOOH and for either $100 or $300 a year you can use and control 9 telescopes from 85mm to 508mm with a FL of 3454mm. The observatories are in the Canary Islands and Chili and Bortle 2 on the darkness scale. The difference in the memberships are the number of imaging runs you can schedule at a time.
If anyone is interested they can respond here rather than a PM since that way everyone can see it.

Here are a couple images I took The Trifid Nebula and the Orion Nebula M42