Hello everyone,

just reentering the hobby after 3 decades, because well, I'm completly amazed by the automation we can achieve. I'm building a small onstep+indilib+whateverfrontend for a small alt/az and 6" SCT for entry level astrophotography and EAA. The whole thing needs to be light, compact and easy to transport once the rig is built. Things needs to run on linux because I don't use the "others" and I'm a system administrator by trade and a half good DIYer. I'm trying to minimize the costs, maximize the fun of building but keep the whole thing managable overall. I'm already occupying half the basement and half my free time with the mount mods and motorization.

I've been experimenting with DSLR and I find them big, heavy and expensive and the dedicated astro CCD are too expensive for my budget for now. So I'm looking at mirrorless because it's light and I'm looking in the second hand market, I don't mind to trade performance for price for now. There's plenty of Sony Nex-(3,5) that look right in the price (I can buy one for around 150$ cdn). However I have the feeling the support in indilib and linux in general is not very good. So I'm scratching the collective mind of the software heart, to make sure that I won't regret buying, spend countless hours without success, sell, resell stuff.

what are the imaging cameras I should look for ?

Hi headgeek,

I would start by looking here: gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php

It will give you an idea of what DSLR's/mirrorless cameras are supported by gphoto.

Plus search through all the indi forums to see what others are using.

I use a Canon 550D, but any of the lower end Canons work with gphoto and are pretty light. Perfect to start with.

regards

Thanks that's exactly what I was looking for,