When it comes to astrophotography, good equipment is a requirement. It’s something no amount of photography skill will replace. But is good astrophotography equipment expensive? Yes.
Astrophotography is very expensive to pursue. The amount you spend is based on how professional you want your photos to be. Functional astrophotography equipment usually costs a minimum of $600, and that’s if you buy used. Professional-level astrophotography equipment can cost upwards of $3000. Software alone, for post-processing your photos can cost $120 a year.
But how much does it cost exactly?
In general astrophotography equipment will cost around $950. The price of a decent camera is around $700 and a sturdy tripod usually costs around $150. But this price can be cheaper if you choose to buy used or refurbished equipment. Also, it can be more expensive if you choose to buy additional equipment like an intervalometer, lens filters, or post processing software.
Cost of the camera
The price of a capable astrophotography camera can vary from $500 all the way to $2000+. You could buy a camera such as the Nikon D3500, or Nikon D5600 which costs around $500-$600 depending on where you buy them from. An entry-level camera will work fine for astrophotography you don’t need really need to spend over $1000 for a camera. But if you’re very dedicated and want to invest in a professional level camera, you could buy a Nikon D500 for around $1500. You get what you pay for.
Cost of an additional lens
The lens that comes with your camera is usually enough. For example, the Nikon D3400 comes with a Nikkor AF-P DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR kit lens. Although this lens will work fine, I would go with a lens that is more wide-angle and has a faster aperture. F/2.8 and faster will work great for capturing light from the night sky. The wider your lens is, the longer you can set the exposure time to without visible star trails. The Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 ATX lens is a great option. It has an aperture of f/2.8 as well as a focal length of 11mm.
Cost of a high-quality tripod
You want to buy a tripod which costs over $100. A low-quality tripod can shift easily and blur your photos. Worst case scenario your tripod breaks or falls over and damages your camera. This is why a high-quality tripod is a must. In general, you get what you pay for, so a $20 tripod is a good deal, but it’s not worth the risk. There are many factors that affect which tripod you want, stability, height, and quality. I personally use tripods from three legged thing.
Cost of an intervalometer
An intervalometer can be important when taking photos that need to be stacked onto each other or edited later. Some uses for an intervalometer are star trial photos and night sky time-lapses. Whether you want an intervalometer is up to you. Technically, you do not need one to take star trail photos or time lapses as you could do it manually, but I don’t think you want to repeatedly press your shutter release button for hours. An intervalometer costs around $50.
Not all cameras support an intervalometer. Some instead, have shutter release remotes such as the ML-L3. These remotes are similar to intervalometers but are only extensions of your shutter release button. An intervalometer can do much more such as shoot photos at an interval and work in all directions. A shutter release button uses infrared red light, meaning you need to point it at the camera. These cost around $20.
Cost of post-processing software
Something people don’t generally talk about when buying their astrophotography equipment is post-processing software like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom. While technically this isn’t equipment, post-processing can make your photo look 5 times better. Especially for milky way photography. Here’s an image before and after post-processing a milky way photo.
You can purchase Adobe Lightroom for $10 a month. So this is not a fixed price but a monthly charge. While $10 a month doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s $120 a year which is a lot. You can also download the mobile version of Adobe Lightroom which is free, but it doesn’t have all the features of the desktop version of Adobe Lightroom. For basic post-processing using the mobile version is fine, but you may want to upgrade to the full version later. You may also want Adobe Photoshop for stacking images but you can also use Sequator, a free software. You can also bundle Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop in their Creative Cloud plan. The 1TB plan costs $20 a month.
Buying used or refurbished
If you buy used or refurbished cameras/lenses you can save around 50% of what you would’ve spent, had you bought a new camera. Be sure to scour amazon and eBay for listings of cheap used or refurbished cameras. For example at the time of writing this, a Nikon D3500 body costs around $400. While buying a used or refurbished Nikon D3500 costs around $300. But beware these cameras could be damaged. To avoid buying damaged equipment, try to buy cameras that say “amazon renewed.”
All together
Let’s add this all up. On the cheap end of the spectrum, a used Nikon D3400 camera body costs $300. A used Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 ATX Pro lens costs around $200. A sturdy but lower end tripod costs around $100. The Nikon D3400 doesn’t actually support intervalometers, although they do support shutter release controllers, we won’t be buying one in this example. We can use the free version of Adobe Lightroom on a mobile phone and use the free stacking tool Sequator. When we add that all up we get $600.
How about the expensive side? Well, one of the best and most expensive cameras Nikon has to offer is the Nikon D850. A new Nikon D850 body alone costs $2500. The Nikon AF FX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.4G lens costs $1500. Although it is not as wide-angle as some other lenses the Nikon D850 is a full-frame camera, which reduces star trials. A high-quality tripod costs about $200. An expensive intervalometer costs $150. If we buy Adobe Creative Cloud Photography 1TB plan (which includes Photoshop and lightroom Altogether) that’s $20 a month, which is $240 a year. I’ll be adding 4 years’ worth of the Adobe Creative Cloud plan to our price. When we add it all up that’s $5310.
So the price of astrophotography can vary from $600 to $5000+. I chose $950 as a good price to get some decent equipment. Nothing too fancy but still high quality.
Nice read. First of all, the type of astrophotography you are talking about is only limited to wide milkyway astro night scapes only. What’s more expensive is Deep Sky Astrophotography and Planetary Imaging. It was not mentioned here, but those are what makes astrophotography expensive.
Thank you for your reply. You’re right!