The Canon 80D is an advanced consumer model DSLR camera, great for everything from landscapes to portraits and especially astrophotography!
Canon 80D
The Canon 80D is my primary "non-astrophotography" camera at this point in my life, and it often does double-duty as an astro-camera as well. Once it's hooked up to a Time Machine it makes a great camera because of its pixel size, sensor sensitivity, and if you have one (or one like it) you probably already have some lenses that you can use for Astrophotography without having to do anything more with a telescope and adapters. The 80D excels at taking [Lunar and Solar]/learn/intro/lunar-and-solar) images, and it does a great job of general astrophotographt as well. Plus you can use it for weddings, wildlife, and astrophotography because it's compatible with every Canon EF and EF-S lens ever made!
Technical Specifications
The Canon 80D was released in March of 2016 which makes is about eight year old as I write this. Despite the age, it's still a phenomenal performer, especially for Astrophotography, where the specs are less important than the quality of the sensors. Here's some of the sepcs that matter most to Astropotamuses:
- 24.2-megapixel dual-pixel CMOS sensor (6000 x 4000)
- DIGIC 6 (DIGIC 5+ on the similar 70D)
- 14-bit analog-to-digital signal conversion
- Live View mode
- ISO 100-16000 (expands to 25600)
- Canon EF/EF-S lenses
- SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot, supporting UHS-I
- File Formats include JPEG and Canon RAW
- USB 2.0 computer interface
- New shutter mechanism to reduce vibrations and camera shake
- 1080p at 60/50 fps video recording capability
- 960 shots per battery
- Built-in Wi-Fi
- Exposure bracketing of up to 7 frames
- Approximate weight 730 g (25.75 oz)
What That All Means
24MP might not be a lot by today's standards for a camera, but for use with a Time Machine, it's more than you need. Even some of the most popular dedicated astro-cameras are less than 10 megapixels in resolution and one of the arguably most popular dedicated astro-cameras of all time is only slightly more at 26MP. Why? Because it's not about the number of pixels, it's about their size and sensitivity. The DIGIC 6 processor is also a little old by today's standards, but we don't need auto-focus, scene selection, eye-tracking, and all those other things that most people want in a camera. We just want a great sensor.
And the 80D delivers. With 3.7um pixels this is comparable to that "most popular" camera mentioned above. In fact, the sensors are almost identical (other than manufacturers). For most astro-imaging purposes and with a good telescope and a good mount you can do some amazing Astrophotography with this combination. In fact, you don't need a telescope, you can just stick a normal camera lens on the end of it, get a good photographic tripod and take widefield images of the night sky that will dazzle everyone who sees them. The sensor will let you choose a good range of ISOs and the 10x zoom on the live-view mode will help you get crisp focus.
Expectations
Let's say you have a reasonably affordable 400mm/f5.6 camera lens to put on your Canon 80D. According to our favorite tool for computing Astrophotography Fields of View we can expect the Moon to look something like what you see to the right. That's pretty good! It fills just under 5% of the field of view of the sensor, which means that it's filling up about 1 mega-pixels. All thing considered, that's a fair amount of data to work work and if you have more advanced optics, you can get even closer!
This doesn't mean it's the perfect camera for everything, though. When I first started using my 80D, I was also using a Celestron C8 telescope. While I was still learning how things worked and it wasn't my best work, I will say that it was a troublesome combination because that telescope is actually too big for this camera. It leads to something called "over-sampling" and means that you have to have a really good mount. I did not have a really good mount at the time, so my pictures were always a little soft. Luckily, there are things you can do to compensate for that (I finally got a really good mount) and using a Focal Reducer will help with that a lot, too.
Conclusions
I still have my Canon 80D and I stil use it. These days, more for general photography than astrophotography. When I do, it's usually on that Celestron C8 with a proper mount and a focal reducer that gives me images similar to what you see on the right. This is slightly more than 1/3 of the total sensor, or 8 megapixels. Remember that some astro-cameras are barely 10MP, so this is a huge amount of data to work with. Plus, with the auto-focuser on the C8, the computer can handle all the details, the mount can track, and the whole thing takes great Moon pictures (and Sun pictures, too, since the Sun and the Moon are the same angular size as seen from Earth).
If you can find a Canon 80D on an auction site, a thrift store, or online vendor for less than $500, you will be hard pressed to find a dedicated astro-camera that will do more for you at three times the price!