Orion 53083 StarShoot G3 Deep Space Monochrome Imaging Camera

Excellent product, the best hands down First Astro Camera anyone can buy. I have taken famtastic pictures of Orion Nebula and andromeda that my coworkers couldnt believe it was taken in my back yard. This isnt exactly begginner friendly you need to be a bit computer smart and read the instructions so you fully understand what this camera is capable of. Focusing for me was simple there are good instructions on it just be patient and take your time reading the manual, i had to put my camera way back to reach focus but once i got there....beautiful orions nebula just popped out with just a 10 second exposure.

Orion Camera Studio is a joke. Terrible to use. The camera itself works perfectly, great starting CCD.

I've been an amateur astronomer for over 40 years (I started very young) and this is a very potent small camera.What impressed me more than the camera was Orion's software program: Orion Camera Studio. It will do Darks,Bias, Flat Frames and calibration which normally takes me hours to do.

Is a good starter camera. But I returned it as I had got a better deal on the used market though CloudyNights.com.

Running at 15C shooting darks the inside of the camera fogged up and camera would not work. After drying out it worked shooting darks and little else.Orion has a lot of nerve releasing the software this must use. Seems if you're not in focus with a good exposure time instead of showing you a bad picture it just crashes.Nebulosity does not recognize this camera.Neither does PHD2 if you wanted to retire it as an autoguider.

The Starshoot G3 has been working well for me.If you want to hear the reasons I'm only giving it 4 stars: well, it's not perfect. The chip is a bit small (752 x 580, if memory serves), but with some fiddling, it has worked for most of what I've wanted to image. Taking great pictures of galaxies (which I'd never been able to do before) has been easy.The included software could be a little better, but I've found work-around for everything. (sometimes it will crash if I mistakenly hit a button while it is busy with image acquisition; the histogram feature doesn't want to let me type numbers into it, so I have to settle for the imprecise sliders; etc.)The number of hot/stuck pixels seems acceptable to me (maybe 20 out of the 400,000+- pixels on the CCD chip).Light sensitivity seems very good to me.Setup was so easy that I felt like I must have missed something! (install the software, put it in the end of the telescope, plug in the cables, take some time to focus, then start taking pictures)Overall, I'm having a great time and taking some beautiful images with the camera.In my opinion, there ARE better cameras out there, but they also cost 5 to 10 times as much! For me, that's just too much to pay (right now) for very minor improvements in quality. Someday paying 4 times as much for a chip 4 times as big will, I'm sure, appeal to me. When I DO buy it, I'll being looking at Orion again ALL THE WAY!

I bit off more than I can chew with this one. Very difficult to focus telescope. Maybe not the best camera for an amateur to start off with. Makes you appreciate the work put into the nice pictures you see in magazines and on web sites.

all ok

I like the camera very much it is good value for money