ZWO ASI2600MC Air Review - The Most Advanced Astro Camera Ever?! - But You Need To Know Something
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Having the two camera sensors together must be better, IMHO. Not only is there no chance of 'flexure', as might occur with a separate guide scope/guide camera combination, but having the guide sensor use the main telescope's focal length should improve guiding. Guide scopes usually have a much shorter focal length, so I would expect guiding, although perfectly adequate is most cases, would be inferior to that with the 2600MC Air.
there is no doubt about this one! I personally never use a separate guide scope exactly because of the issues you mentioned. The main question here is whether having the guide sensor next to the main sensor (and thereby after any filters) is a good tradeoff for gaining the extra backfocus you gain by not using an off-axis guider
Your channel is great. New into "this". My rig will be a simple ZWO am5 + refractor + ZWO 2600 air with and AF. I think it is simple and portable enough, probably not the most cost efficient rig though.
definitely not the cheapest combo but it will make your life so much easier and get you imaging in no time!
Nice video. I just bought the 2600 duo a couple weeks ago. It a game changer for me. I have a question, I also have the filter drawer adapter for Canon lenses. Is there a way to attach a Canon 50mm lens and 2600 to a star tracker? I want to image the Barnards Loop with it, or is there another way to image it with the 2600? Thanks for the info.
ZWO sells a metallic ring you attach directly on the camera and it has an arca swiss plate at the bottom. You could swap the arca swiss plate for a vixen dovetail bar if that's what your tracker requires. You'll find it if you google "zwo 90mm ring"
Thanks for your review very informative as always, I have 3 mono setups with nina moved around a few scopes like yourself and I was thinking of getting one to do just some LRGB faint object and/or IFN but I think it's worth it only if you have a fast scope below F5 in your(mine) grab and go dark sky scenario as for just one night it's important to be able to collect decent noise free data.... otherwise I'd feel bad for not using my mono rig 🙈 ps: I have seen your recent videos and I only see mono rigs 😎 PS2: about wireless I have 2 iOptron mounts with ipolar.. polar alignment takes maximum 2 minutes also guiding is great also at 1000mm but the wifi connectivity is rubbish 🙈
mono rigs are my go-to for most purposes, but I do still have the 2600MC Air (and actually also the duo) and use them regularly. For example, on my RASA8 I use the Duo exlusively as it makes life so much simpler
Your video says nothing about getting the cam into focus. Im having an impossible time polar aligning mine. All I see is noise. Ive tried live, focus, preview. No joy. Why cant i see any stars?
I did not cover focus as that is related to the optics not the camera, strictly speaking. Sorry to hear that you are having dificulty, in this case I recommend starting to find focus on the Moon, or even better, on something distant in the daytime. Which scope are you working with? Ensure your backfocus is correct too otherwise you may not be able to reach focus
Thank you for your thoughts. I am the other scenario you haven't thought about. I have a large fancy set up that I haven't used ever since I purchased my Seestar S50 as I stink at polar alignment and it takes me forever. I'm in.
This is exactly me - have a both the S30 and S50 have just bought a brand new ZWO rig….. however I am struggling with a few things - the filters - how do they fit.? Which way around.? I’m figuring out but a basic video on how to connect everything would be useful.
I ordered this camera a few days ago (haven't had it delivered yet) as part of my version of a smart telescope setup, inspired by your video on the same subject. I did consider buying the ASI2600MC-DUO for better flexibility, and then of course separate guide scope, camera and ASiair, but decided against it as simplicity was really what I was aiming for with this setup. I feel that it is very good value for money, particular with the Black Friday offers still available, and I cannot wait to have all my components delivered, and not least some clear skies to try it out under (which is certainly not in the cards any day soon unfortunately). I do agree with you though. If you already have a guide scope, a guide camera, and an ASiair or equivalent, then there is probably no good reason to aim for the ASI2600MC Air over e.g. the ASI2600MC-DUO unless you prioritise the simplicity factor.
I agree this is great for simplicity, though you wouldn't have needed a seprate guide scope for the duo - the integrated guide sensor is the main feature it has!
@the_space_koala Yes, of course. My mistake about the Duo 😆
Finally ordered it this week! :-)
woohoo
Do you recommend it?
@kingwolfjm8500yes. A 100%… if you are into OSC imaging. Otherwise get the MM version of the ASI2600 air with the filterwheel and a narrowband filter set.
I've thought about getting the air version... though having the air integrated gives it a lifespan. There has been 3 releases of ASIAIR in what? 4 years? Contextually the original release JUST 4 years ago isn't supported and can't be updated to the newest firmware. ANNNDD though it can still connect to the ASIAIR app you may have to jump through hoops to do so. My point being... you're limiting your access directly to the camera by way of a pretty cheap and what should be considered disposable raspberry pi controller.
that's a valid point and a real concern. To be a little more precise, the original ASIAIR came out 7 years ago now, but yeah that still isn't a super long time. You would want to be able to use your camera for quite a few years
I'm only here for the knockers!!
The camera is great, but what's annoying is that it keeps happening that images aren't sent and the camera stops. You have to constantly check to see if everything is still working, which I've also heard from several astrophotographers. Why is this?
what do you mean by "the images aren't sent" - are you using it via the ASIAIR app or via Alpaca? In the case of ASIAIR, if the application is in the background, it won't be downloading the photos, but they are saved on the selected storage media
That’s funny you mentioned forgetting a cable I just did that tonight. Forgot the USB cable. I couldn’t believe it.! good times!
you may forget one or break one - which I've done multiple times!
Is wireless range on this camera more powerful than the asi plus.
I have no way of measuring it but I think it's the same
Hi Space Koala. Another great video, thanks! To answer your question at the end... I set up my AM5 and AM3 rigs to connect over WiFi. Incidentally the AM3 rig has a 2600 duo and asiair mini (so separate but equivalent to the air model in this review). It took me a morning of research, then an afternoon of testing to set them up, including a few goes to make sure that the configuration settings persisted through power cycles, and to rule out any chance that I that I was accidentally relying on my home WiFi). The night test session under the stars demonstrated that it worked well enough. BUT then I did a comparison of guiding (just looking at the guide numbers). I swapped back and forth between wired and unwired over and over for a few minutes at a time (letting things settle and ruling out changes in seeing conditions). Guiding over WiFi came close, but it was a clear second place in that test. I decided that I could live with it as a "hot standby" (and I did intend to keep it configured for that purpose) but wired (being better) was and remains my clear first choice. A year or two on, and a couple of software updates later, after general messing around with other things, I found out that this wifi capability is 'broken' on the small rig. I have probably reconfigured something and it no longer works. Its gonna take a couple of hours to figure out. Thinking about that... there's no way I could fix this on-the-fly in the field (if a cable was missing or broke) and still get value out of the night. So yeah. I'm still using cable for guiding. I would suggest wireless is good fallback, but USE it occasionally, and check it more often than I did, so you know if you broke it. Also be aware that there is latency in WiFi and its a shared hardware 'service' (shared between guiding, contol, user interface, and image display). The scheduling software that arbitrates when guiding software gets a slot & when, can change per release. So all in all, cable is just more predictable, more effective, more consistent, more robust, and more fixable (so long as you have a spare). As an alternative to cable, bluetooth is a more solid design choice for a rig. This is because (aside from the new EAF) it's dedicated to doing mount control and guiding. In software terms its 'always available'. But although my AM3 is ready for it, neither of the ASIair mini's and pro's that I own can do BT, so I haven't been able to try it out.
thanks for this detailed and valuable response. indeed I did not do a direct test of the guiding performance over bluetooth vs cable, it would be worth doing a few measurements on different devices to get a general idea!
So what's the final verdict for downloading your files onto your Mac?
downloading them from the "asiair" mode is easy. To use it directly via wi-fi, I honestly never tried again
とても高機能なカメラで利便性もいいすね😊 価格的にもasi2600mcPro、asiairMini、ガイドスコープ、asi220mmMiniより安くていいなあ ただ、どれか一つでも不具合が出ると困りそう😅
Very good review! Are you using a portable power station to operate your gear? I usually do backyard astrophotography, however I intend to go outside my home, and have to buy a power station. Any recommendation? My gear is the 2600MC Air + AM5. I want to shoot about 7 hours in an night.
I use an EcoFlow River Pro. Most of the time I’m able to get 2 nights out of it with 2 rigs. The limitation is just the output at once - I couldn’t do 2 large rigs at once
Great video and very informative. Just a my two cents but I do not see why you have chosen to have the jerky video and occasional audio odd effects. It is not "edgy", it just detracts from a solid presentation.
Thanks. I’m afraid it’s not on purpose, I was just really not a good speaker back then and I had to do a million cuts
I saw a video of someone using an external guidescope/zwo camera with the 2600 air and it seemed to recognize it.
yes it's a full fledged ASIAIR so it will work! That's an option for people who will mostly use the internal guider but still sometimes want to guide externally