Any advantage/disadvantage of DSLR vs mirrorless for astrophotography?

Hi guys,

Old guy here. Total amateur. I was pretty active about 5 or 6 years ago. I lost all my gear and gave up for a few years. I am now making my way back into the photo hobby. My favorite things to shoot are macro and astrophotography.

I am deciding between the 90D and the R6. Cost doesn't factor into the decision, just want to know if one or the other lends itself better to this genre? My last camera was the 70D and I had lots of fun with that. I hear good things about both the D90 and the R6.

On a related note, are the extra pixels of the R5 vs the R6 a game changer for starry sky shooting?

Thanks for reading, I better go update my signature.

Interesting question, looking forward to some opinions.

Hi there,

I may have some info for you, based on my astrophotography and camera modification experience.

A full frame camera sensor will definitely perform better than a cropped sensor. There is going to be less noise and of course, you are getting a bit wider field of view.
You already have a nice APS-C sized body - the 70D. It's one of my favorite cameras.
Combined with your 100 L lens the 70D is going to produce some really nice images.
But you would need at least a star tracker. If you find yourself enjoying astrophotography down the road, you can purchase a small refractor and a GoTo mount for even better results.

If you are planning to do nightscape photography, then you can get away with just a tripod and short focal length lenses.
Typically, folks just take lots of single sub exposures and stack them all together in using a stacking software like DSS.
The stacked image is then going through postprocessing, also called stretching. That's where all the beautiful details appear.

Here are some examples of what can be done using a cropped camera:
https://nightskycamera​.com/gallery/

When you say 'astro photography' do you mean images such as milky way shots or deep space stuff?

I used an entry level DSLR for the deep sky stuff for ages and when I changed to a dedicated astro camera it was a game changer.

Regardless of that, my opinion is that I have an EOS R and am now a fan of mirrorless, perhaps it's just perception but I feel that it is waaaay better than the 6D it replaced, in both image quality and general feel. In the end, I don't think you'd go wrong with any of them and your skill and image processing will make up for any deficiencies in the hardware.

Yes, I should have been clearer. I'm definitely in the milky way, near space group. I've no desire at this time to do the really deep space stuff. I love too see it, but it's way beyond my knowledge level, skill and desire.

I'm leaning hard towards mirrorless.

Thank you to nightskycamera and xa-coupe for responding.