$371 today for an IMX533 cooled astro camera

[Brad Templeton]

I got a pre-black-friday promotional email that was so good I went and bought one, it's the SVbony IMX533 OSC camera for $371 including shipping.    That's a very good deal, the ZWO camera with this sensor is $800, the Touptek is $759.

What's the catch?  SVbony isn't the best Chinese astro gear maker, though they are not horrible either.    Their camera doesn't have a built-in USB hub like most cooled astro cameras, but frankly I need another USB hub anyway or you can get one for $20 so it's not a big deal.   Probably the biggest difference is that their cooler only cools 30 degrees below ambient rather than the 35 the ZWO does, so there will be a little more dark current.

The IMX533 is the premium small sensor out there.  It's essentially the same as the IMX571 that is considered the gold standard, but smaller and square.  It's 9MP instead of 26MP but it has the same pixel size and other attributes.   Too small if you want to shoot very large nebula but great for galaxies and other targets.      Get the 571 if you want to spend the cash - it's $1,500 -- but this is $371 only today.    The monochrome is $680 but it might go down for black friday.   The product is in the USA so no extra tariffs.  

Anyway, at that price I decided to give it a shot.   Reviews of the camera are generally good. 

Go to their site and enter the coupon USsvbony100, they have coupons as well off their other cameras, filters and a refractor.  I'm also going to pick up their 3nm dual band filter which has a crazy low price, if reviewers didn't say it worked, I wouldn't believe it at $100. But I have my older mono camera with narrowband filters for that stuff.

[Brad Templeton]

Oops.  After writing all that I see the $100 off has expired.   As Emily Latella would say, "never mind."    The email said it was good 15th and 16th.  But maybe they will repeat on black friday.