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i am having a hard time understanding the pixel size to quilty/detail stuff

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If you have two sensors build with the *exact* same technology with the same electronics reading from it put in identical cameras and one sensor has physically larger pixels then the other then the one with the larger pixels *will* produce a higher quality signal simply because the larger pixel area allows more photons to be collected for a given exposure time.

That said the sensor technology does not stand still (thankfully) so in reality the smaller pixels of the T3i do not actually give you any disadvantage. Yay for technological advance!



So as to your actual dilemma.... I would absolutely get that XT and mod it! I use both an XT and a more modern XS, the XT is moded and the XS not (yet).

Here is what you can expect with the XT (vs a T3i)

- Pro: You can mod it!!! BIG difference!! Worth suffering the cons IMHO.
- Pro: the XT/350D does perform well for astro-capture despite it's age
- neutral: "average" seeing is reported to often be in the 2-4 arc-second range. 3-arc seconds per pixel sounds fine there most of the time.
- Con: the XT does not have live-view (not too big of a deal with a computer and 1s looping test exposures)
- Con: the XT requires a long exposure adaptor cable & computer or an interval timer remote to get exposures longer then 30s (minor inconvenience only)
- Con: the XT does *not* have drivers for 64bit windows (and never will). If you have a brand-new Win8 machine you may need something like XP in a VM to do computer based camera control.
- Con: the XT has amp-glow. This makes well-match dark frames very important.


Hope that helps!

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