ABSTRACT
An observation made of the first edition was its lack of emphasis on using conventional digital (color) cameras. It is easy to get hung up on these things but the camera is just one part of a vast array of other equipment, software and processes that are common, regardless of the choice. Whether or not a camera is a DSLR (or mirror-less model) or a dedicated CCD, it is still connected to a telescope, power and a USB cable. There are some differences though; some snobbery and also misleading claims about the inefficiency of color cameras: For an object that is not monochromatic, there is little difference in the received photon count via a color camera or a sensor behind a filter wheel for any given session. Unfortunately, conventional digital cameras alter the RAW image data and the (CMOS) output is not as linear as that from an dedicated CCD camera. Monochrome sensors do have other advantages; there is a slight increase in image resolution, the external red and green filters reject Sodium-yellow light pollution and more efficient for narrowband use. As a rule, dedicated cameras are more easily cooled too. These are the principal reasons both book editions major on monochrome CCD cameras, using an external filter wheel to create colored images and unmolested linear sensor data. This chapter addresses the important omissions concerning linearity and color formation in conventional color cameras.
