The ToupTek ATR 585C colour cooled camera can be seen as an alternative to the popular ZWO ASI 585 MC PRO colour camera, as the same sensor made by Sony is the heart of the camera and therefore the capabilities are almost identical. A built-in, efficient Peltier cooler can cool the sensor, which heats up during extended exposure times, by up to 45°C below ambient temperature, keeping noise during shooting to a minimum. To compensate for this high cooling capacity, the camera also boasts anti-humidification heating.
The camera offers one-step colour shooting, without the need for the L-RGB colour filtering technique that is essential for monochrome versions. The 8 megapixel (3840 x 2160) Sony IMX585 sensor does its job with incredibly low readout noise. Thanks to Sony's Starvis-2 technology, the sensor features so-called HCG (High Conversion Gain) and LCG (Low Conversion Gain) modes: the former increases gain so that noise levels are only minimally higher when shooting with longer shutter speeds. What's more! The ToupTek cameras support HDR mode - which essentially combines HCG and LCG modes - to increase the dynamic range of the camera, approaching the quality of 16-bit sensors, according to the manufacturer's promise.
When shooting at slower shutter speeds, many cameras often experienced "flare", which could only be compensated for with post-production. Using the ToupTek ATR 585C colour cooled camera, longer shutter speeds (2000 seconds) can be recorded at low noise levels, while also eliminating the "amp glow" or "flare" effect that can occur when signal amplification is applied. This result is greatly aided by the internal 512 MB DDR3 memory buffer, which also ensures stability of data traffic.
ToupTek's ATR 585C color cooled camera sensor with its 12.86 mm image diagonal also makes it suitable for larger field-of-view depth-of-field photography. Fine detail is guaranteed by the small 2.9 μm pixel size, making it an ideal choice as a sun, moon and planet camera and for depth photography, as it has a very high (QE 91%)sensitivity. As the camera does not have a built-in UV/IR filter, it remains sensitive to these ranges, but of course you can add a filter to the light path afterwards.
Of course, you can not only take still images, but also videos if you want to use it as a planetary camera. At its highest resolution of 3840 x 2160, videos are recorded at 47fps (frames per second). At a lower resolution of 1920 x 1080, 70fps is also available, which is a very high rate at this resolution. On the back of the camera, there's a USB 3.0, two USB 2.0 connectors on the body, and the 12V DC socket. A series of status LEDs informs the user of its operation.
For image capture, there are a number of free software downloads available from the internet, and for Windows we particularly recommend SharpCap and FireCapture, but it's also great to use with the manufacturer's own software (ToupSky). The popular PHD2 software also supports the camera, while the use of the ASCOM driver gives the device even broader support. The camera can be used with Windows, Linux and even Macintosh operating systems.
The package includes:
- ToupTek ATR 585C color cooled camera
- Power supply + cable
- 12.5mm T2 adapter (starter adapter for 12.5mm backfocus)
- 16.5 mm T2 to M48 adapter
- 21 mm T2 extension adapter
- USB 3.0 cable (1.5 m)
