 If you've been following this channel, you probably have noticed that I mostly use Canon cameras, and I have no particular brand allegiance to Canon, but when you have as many Canon EF lenses and accessories as I do, it makes the most sense to keep going with the same camera system, whether that's Canon or Nikon or Sony. However, at times I have been tempted to switch, I even bought a Nikon D800 for astrophotography, and for a while I used that. Before I got the Canon ESRA, at which point I sold it. And Nikon cameras are preferred by many astrophotographers over Canon, as their cameras, especially the recent ones, tend to have sensors that are lower noise and more ISO invariant than Canon. The actual reason behind this is because Nikon switched over to using Sony sensors, and Canon still does all their sensor design in-house, and they're just behind Sony in terms of absolute performance of their sensors. By the way, most of the popular CMOS astronomy cameras from ZWO, QHY, etc. also use these same Sony sensors that are in the Nikon DSLR and both the Sony and Nikon mirrorless cameras. But something I've always wondered is how much does using Canon, which has the slightly noisier sensors, really matter when it comes to our final results as astrophotographers? Because you usually just see the two camps, someone who shoots only Canon, someone who shoots only Nikon, and they argue. But we know that sensor noise is only one thing that impacts the kinds of results you can expect. So what I'm going to explore in this video, and I did a few real-world tests to actually figure this out, is if I keep all the other factors the same, same telescope, same night sky, same settings, can we see a difference between Canon and Nikon? And a quick note before we dig into this comparison, I received this full spectrum Nikon D5300 from Night Sky Camera, who were interested in letting me use this camera for the channel however I wished. And Night Sky Camera is an awesome business out of Vancouver in Canada, and they sell pre-modified Canon and Nikon DSLRs, or they can also modify your DSLR if it's one of the ones that they work on. And this particular Nikon D5300 is a full spectrum mod, so it can be used for infrared photography with an IR pass filter, and they also change the positioning of the sensor so that autofocus should still work. I don't have any Nikon lenses to test that, but I do believe them. And so it's a very cool camera. I've had a blast using it. And let's dig in. First, let's look a little bit at the features in this Nikon D5300 compared to your typical Canon DSLR. And I'll be using a modded Canon 60D as my comparator here. It's a bit older, but it's a popular choice to have modded in the Canon world just like the D5300 is a very popular choice for mods for Nikon. And this is going to be a short section because they're really mostly well matched when it comes to features that would be important to an astrophotographer. Both these models have fully articulating screens that you can fold away or more importantly point up, which is huge when pointing up at the night sky and needing to see the screen. And they both have a nice live view option for focusing and star hopping and things like that. On the Canon, you press the Q button to access the quick menu items. And on the Nikon, it's the I button. And that lets you change things like ISO, shooting mode, and those kinds of things quickly. The main difference, and it's definitely a point for Nikon, is the Nikon menu has an internal interval shooting mode in the menu. And this is often called an internal intervalometer. From what I could tell, it doesn't completely replace the need for an external intervalometer because I can only set the interval, not the bulb timing. So it would only work for doing a sequence of shots if I limited the exposure time to 30 seconds. If I wanted to do, for instance, a sequence of three minute exposures, I'd still have to use an external intervalometer or a computer to control the camera. So it is a plus for the Nikon because especially with fast lens based shooting, I'm often just doing 30 second sub exposures. Now outside of the features of the cameras themselves, another thing worth looking at is accessories that you might want to buy to go with the camera. And in terms of software support, they both seem to have plenty of options in terms of connecting to a PC and running them from software to control the exposures and things like that. They also both have intervalometer ports and plenty of options there. For lenses, both again have plenty of options and Sigma makes the art series lenses for both Nikon F and Canon EF. So you have some of the best lenses out there for astrophotography available for both camera systems. The one big difference in accessory support is clip-in filters. There are so many more for the Canon APS-C bodies, which all have this same internal structure that accepts this clip-in filter quite easily. It's much more difficult though for Nikon and the only ones, the only clip-in filters that I can find for this D5300 are the STC optical filters out of Hong Kong. So it's not that they don't exist, but you just don't have nearly as many options for clip-ins as you would with Canon. To prepare for this showdown, I took a look at Bill Claff's Photons to Photos website and the input-referred read noise chart gives you a pretty good idea of what we call the ISO and variance of these two cameras. So I'm just going to pick the 60D and the Nikon D5300 here to compare and you can see that the Nikon has a much flatter curve, meaning using it for long exposures at lower ISO like 400 or even 200 shouldn't pose no significant problems in terms of read noise hit. While with the Canon 60D, I wouldn't advise using it below something like ISO 1600 for stacked deep sky imaging. And the reason you might want to use lower ISO and longer exposures is to increase the potential for dynamic range in your image. So you could retain good star color in the bright highlights while bringing out the very faint detail like dusty objects and things like that. So dynamic range is typically decreased as you increase ISO because the full well capacity at each photo site is diminished. Now interestingly, the Canon and Nikon cameras seem to converge in terms of read noise right at ISO 3200, which is already an ISO I use a lot for deep sky imaging. So that will be an interesting comparison between the two. The other interesting comparison is for longer exposures at a much lower ISO. So for that I picked ISO 400 because the read noise is almost doubled for the Canon versus the Nikon at ISO 400. Okay and on to the main event here, which is direct comparisons. These were taken on the same night with the same lens, which was the Ascar 200 millimeter astro camera lens at f4 from a Bordel 4 sky with no moonlight. I'm using my standard testing subject here, which is the North America Nebula. And the first thing we're going to look at is just single 30 second exposures straight from camera. I did just the only thing I did here was an auto stretch of each image and lined them up with registration so that we could do direct comparisons. So we have, I'm going to go through a number of comparisons here. The Canon is always going to be on the left and the Nikon is always going to be on the right. And again, this is a single 30 second exposure. This gives you an idea of what it looks like zoomed out. But now let's do some zoom ins because that's where we're going to really see any differences in noise if there are any. And remember this is at ISO 3200 where according to that website photons to photos, the read noise is about the same on these two cameras. And I think I do see a little bit more noise on the Canon. It just looks a little grainier. And then where there is pops of color, the color is a little bit more intense than here in single 30 second Nikon. So I'd say it's visually it's pretty close, but the Canon definitely has just a little bit more noise visually in a single 30 second exposure without calibration. Okay, let's next look at that same single 30 second exposure but now calibrated with bias flats and darks. And again, here's what it looks like zoomed out. Now let's zoom in again. It's really just sort of a different quality of noise, I guess in a sense, but I do think that I see a little bit of banding already even in a single 30 second exposure with the Canon. Well, on the Nikon, the noise looks more random and distributed evenly. Well, I can see a little bit of sort of pattern in the Canon, which looks like it could pose an issue. Okay, but the proof is going to be in the stacked results. So here is 18 30 second exposures stacked Canon on the left Nikon on the right. And these both look pretty good. You can see that there's some color differences, but these are different mods. The Canon is an HA mod. The Nikon is a full spectrum bear sensor. So there's some differences there. Let's zoom in again. And you know, stacked, I'm seeing much less difference between the two in terms of the noise. You know, the probably the Nikon maybe just edges out the the Canon, but I'm seeing really about the same level of detail. Let's zoom in even a little bit more getting into sort of blocky stars territory now, but that's okay. That's really close. You know, I think we're seeing a few more stars on the Nikon because it's full spectrum. So we get some of those infrared stars. But you can definitely tell the difference between stars and noise. And in terms of just, you know, the amount of detail shown and the amount of random noise, I really am not seeing a huge difference between these two. Well, I'll let I'll let everyone who's watching be the judge here. I don't I'm not seeing much of a difference, which is I guess what I expected to not see a huge difference if the read noise is going to be the same at ISO 3200, but they look pretty close. And again, this is the Canon 60d 18 frame stacked the Nikon D 5300 18 frames at 30 seconds ISO 3200 stacked. Okay, so now on to the final event and this is where Nikon I think has the chance to really show its stuff. We did a single four minute exposure at ISO 400, where the read noise on the Canon is double that of the Nikon. And I don't know if you can see this in the video, but I'm already seeing issues here on the Canon even zoomed out all the way. So I think Nikon is going to beat the Canon here handily. But let's go ahead and zoom in and take a look. Yeah. And so here, this is where, you know, earlier, I think when we were looking at photons to photos, the website, I said, I wouldn't use Canon at below ISO 1600 part of it is what we call the read noise. But another part here is just that when you get to those lower ISOs on Canon cameras, this horizontal banding really shows up. That's quite noticeable. You can see it here, that really strong line right there. While here on the Nikon, I don't see any banding whatsoever. Otherwise, yeah, even just, you know, if we look at some of these finer details here on the Nikon, they're starting to really come into their own even in a single four minute exposure because we don't have as much noise. And in the Canon, they're really getting lost in the noise, those dim details. Now, of course, in the high signal areas, there's not going to be nearly as much difference between the two. So in the in the bright parts here of Orion Nebula, you're not going to see much difference. Yeah, I mean, it really depends on the part of the scene you're looking at like here. I don't see a huge difference. There's definitely more green noise that looks like on the Canon. You can see in this little blue reflection Nebula right here, it looks sort of green in the Canon. Well, it looks better in the Nikon. But it's really here when we just get to the empty sky. You see all of this banding, this horizontal banding going down in the empty sky area. While in the in the Nikon, the noise is much more evenly distributed throughout. Well, hopefully this gives you an idea. I mean, I can definitely see a difference. It's maybe not as extreme as I was expecting. But there's definitely a difference here. And the Nikon did beat out the the Canon in this ISO 400 challenge. So to end with going back to the title of this video, I'm not going to switch to Team Nikon at the moment. I've developed a style of imaging with Canon cameras, where I use full calibration, I work at the right ISO, and that works fine for me. I don't feel like I'm missing so much. But I have nothing against Nikon, and I'll gladly acknowledge that their sensors are more ISO invariant, and typically will have lower noise at lower ISOs, which has definite advantages for deep sky imaging. The big downside to Nikon crop sensor DSLRs is that they have very limited clip-in filter selection. So if you're mostly a lens based shooter rather than a telescope based shooter, and you want to use filters, then Canon is a better bet for that. Well, there are many other camera brands to try. I think the next one on my list that I'd like to try is Fuji. Not much support for astro accessories, but they make some really interesting cameras, and I've seen some cool results with Fuji cameras. Hope my reasoning here all made sense. I want to thank NightSky Camera again for sending this Nikon D5300, which made this shoot out possible. Until next time, this has been Nico Carver, NebulaFotos.com. Clear skies.