miniCAM8 camera deep sky combo review

QHY is a well-recognized name in astrophotography. They build cameras trusted by professional observatories and by hobbyists like me who crave that level of excellence at a reachable price. As many of you know, the smart telescope world is booming right now - just last month I reviewed ZWO's new "smart" telescope that features the Sony IMX585 sensor, and it seems every month there's another model to compare. The IMX585 sensor itself has a phenomenal track record in low-light imaging; it's found in devices ranging from traditional astronomy cameras to cutting-edge all-in-one scopes. Now QHY has taken that same sensor and put a twist on it: a monochrome miniCAM8 with a built-in filter wheel, aiming to bring advanced imaging performance to more of us. If you like the new S30 Pro using the IMX585 and already crave more details, contrast, and data - this article is for you!

I've been an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer for decades, and I'll admit I was excited (and a bit skeptical) about the idea of an affordable mono camera that "does it all." Once upon a time, going monochrome meant spending a small fortune on a camera, a filter wheel, and a set of filters - not to mention dealing with a spaghetti of cables and software for each component. Here, QHY offers the miniCAM8 as an all-in-one package: a cooled 8-megapixel mono camera that's integrated with an 8-position motorized filter carousel and runs through a single USB cable. It sounds like a dream setup for someone starting in monochrome astrophotography or looking for a portable rig. I set out to test this camera to see if it lives up to its promise.

Design and Build Quality of the miniCAM8 M camera deep sky combo

The QHY miniCAM8 is about the size of a hockey puck on steroids - roughly 4 inches in diameter and a couple of inches thick. It feels solid in the hand, with a metal housing that acts as a heat sink for the two-stage thermoelectric (TEC) cooling inside. There's a small fan at the back for the cooler, and I noticed that as soon as you plug in power, that fan spins up and the camera starts cooling the sensor automatically. (In fact, the fan runs at full tilt by default - a minor quirk that's a bit noisy indoors, though barely noticeable outside at night.) The TEC is specced to pull the sensor down to about -45 °C below ambient, which is serious cooling power for a camera in this class. In my testing, I had no trouble maintaining sensor temperatures around -10 °C even on a warm evening - plenty cold enough to eliminate thermal noise for long exposures. Another noticeable benefit of the cooler tech that QHY uses is that cooling is surprisingly fast; this helps get you imaging more quickly which is always a good thing.

On the front of the miniCAM8 is the optical window and behind it the integrated filter wheel. The filter wheel holds eight filter positions, which is generous - enough to load a full set of LRGB (luminance, red, green, blue) filters, three narrowband filters (for example Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen III, and Sulfur II), and still have an extra slot (many people, myself included, use that extra slot for a "dark" blank to take dark frames or just to seal the camera when not imaging). QHY actually includes a dark filter for this purpose. One really clever thing QHY did to keep the size and cost down was make the filters themselves much smaller than the standard 1.25-inch or 2-inch filters. The filters are tiny rectangles of glass about 19 x 12 mm in size - just big enough to cover the sensor area plus a margin. By not wasting glass (and money) on large round filters where most of the area would not be used, they manage to include a full seven-filter set (LRGB and 7 nm narrowbands for Ha, OIII, SII) in the monochrome "Deep Sky" combo package without breaking the bank. Of course, this also means you can't just drop in any off-the-shelf filter; you'll need to use QHY's filter sets made for the miniCAM8's little carousel. That's a trade-off: it locks you into their filters, but the upside is a much lower cost for the whole system.

The camera has a single USB 3.0 port for both the camera and the filter wheel control - a single cable handles data and commands (wish list for a small USB hub on the back . I absolutely love this, because it simplifies my setup greatly. If you've ever run a portable imaging rig, you know that fewer cables and connections mean fewer points of failure (and fewer things to snag on the mount in the dark). The miniCAM8 also has a locking 12 V DC power jack (another thoughtful touch; once you screw the cable on, it won't accidentally unplug if you tug it). Notably, there are no extra USB hubs or guide ports on this camera body - it's a straightforward design, which I suspect helped keep costs down. I do have a bit of a wish list and that version two has a small USB hub on the back of the camera for things like a focus or or a guide scope.

Setting up the filters in the wheel was the one time I had to grab a screwdriver. QHY ships the miniCAM8 filter wheel empty, with the filters in a sealed, protective tray to ensure they arrive in the best possible condition. They provide the screwdriver, screws, and even a pair of tweezers to help place the filters. I'm the kind of person who reads the manual (40 years of astronomy teaches you patience), so I carefully followed the instructions: remove the cover plate, drop each tiny filter into its slot (they fit perfectly), and screw the retaining plate back on. The only trick was making sure to align the plate correctly - one position on the wheel has two small holes that must line up with sensors inside the camera, so the wheel knows where it is. The documentation was clear about it, so it was hard to mess up. In the end, I actually enjoyed this five-minute assembly process; it gave me a sense of accomplishment, like I was "building" part of my new toy. It's a clever bit of cost-saving by QHY (they don't have to pay someone to do this at the factory), and it also makes the shipping safer (loose filters rattling around would be bad). Once assembled, the filter wheel operated flawlessly - each filter clicked into place under software control, and the indexing was spot-on.

The IMX585 Sensor and Performance

At the heart of the miniCAM8 is Sony's IMX585 sensor. This is a 1/1.2-inch format CMOS chip with 8.3 megapixels (resolution of 3840 × 2160). Each pixel is only 2.9 microns in size, which is great for capturing fine detail, especially with shorter focal length telescopes. What's special about the miniCAM8's version of this sensor is that it's monochrome - there's no color Bayer matrix on top. Most cameras that have used the IMX585 (for example, a few color planetary cameras and at least one "smart telescope" like the ZWO Seestar) are one-shot-color by design. A monochrome IMX585 was almost unheard of until now, and QHY is one of the first to offer it. The mono sensor means that every pixel is sensitive to all wavelengths of light, unlike a color sensor where each pixel only sees red, green, or blue through a filter array. In practice, this gives a huge jump in sensitivity and effective resolution for astrophotography, because when you use filters on a mono camera, you're still sampling the full sensor resolution in each filter. No interpolation, no Bayer pattern losses - just crisp detail.

Let's talk numbers for a moment: Sony's data shows the IMX585 has high quantum efficiency (QE), peaking around 90%, and importantly for us deep-sky folks, it maintains high QE in the red and near-infrared. That means it's excellent at picking up H-alpha light (656 nm) from nebulae and even does better than many older sensors at the OIII line (500 nm) and SII (672 nm). I noticed this when comparing it to my older camera - faint nebula details in Hα popped with shorter exposures than I expected. The sensor also has what Sony calls "STARVIS 2" technology, essentially an HDR mode. The miniCAM8 can combine two 12-bit analog-to-digital converters to output a 16-bit image, capturing a high dynamic range in one shot. The upshot is you can retain bright star detail and faint nebulosity in the same frame better than older 12-bit or 14-bit cameras. In my field use, I found dynamic range to be excellent for an 8 MP sensor - bright stars didn't saturate as quickly, and I could stretch my images quite a lot before blowing out highlights.

The read noise of this camera is specified as ~7.8 electrons at low gain and as low as ~0.8 electrons at high gain (when that high conversion gain mode kicks in). In practice, I ran the camera mostly in its high gain mode for narrowband imaging, which on the QHY driver is enabled at a certain gain value (around 80 in the driver scale). At that setting, the camera's read noise drops dramatically, and indeed my 5-minute sub-exposures showed very clean backgrounds - the noise was dominated by sky background and not by the camera. It's a bit like having two cameras in one: a low-gain mode if you need maximum well depth for bright targets, and a high-gain mode for low noise on faint stuff. Most of the time, especially under light-polluted skies or when shooting narrowband, you'd use the high-gain mode. And since the dynamic range is still around 11–12 stops in that mode, you're not sacrificing much.

I should mention the camera is completely free of amplifier glow. Some older generation CMOS sensors would produce a glow on one side of the frame during long exposures, which had to be subtracted out. The IMX585 shows no such glows in my dark frames - one less thing to worry about in processing. Combined with the effective cooling (and the sealed sensor chamber with a desiccant to prevent fogging), it makes calibration frames very straightforward. Dark frames from the miniCAM8 at -10 °C come out nearly pristine, with only the occasional hot pixel. It's a far cry from the noisy frames I used to get with an uncooled DSLR - this is a real astronomical camera.

Filters and Flexibility

My miniCAM8 test unit came as the "Monochrome Deep Sky Combo," which includes a full set of seven filters: Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, plus 7 nm narrowband filters for SII, Hα, and OIII. These are made by a company called XiMei (the name isn't printed on them, but QHY has noted the supplier) and they are surprisingly good quality. I measured the star sizes and focus points through each filter, and I can confirm QHY's claim that they are parfocal. When I focused the camera using the luminance filter, I was able to switch to Hα, OIII, SII, etc., and the focus remained sharp without adjustment. That's a relief because manually refocusing between filters can be a pain if filters are not parfocal. The color balance of the LRGB set also seemed quite neutral - stars came out with natural-looking colors once combined. I spoke with other miniCAM8 owners and their results were similar. There are always minor variations in the manufacturing, but the consensus was that QHY got the filters right. 

With 8 total slots, you have one slot still free in the mono combo (assuming you use one as a dark). QHY does offer an interesting optional filter: an Argon III (Ar III) 7 nm filter. Argon-III is not a common band for amateur imaging; it corresponds to an emission line you might see in some planetary nebulae or extreme objects. It's the kind of filter you'd use mostly out of curiosity or for a specific scientific project. I haven't tried it myself (it's about $99 and often out of stock due to niche demand), but it's neat that they even thought to provide something so specialized for this little camera.

One thing I really appreciate is that QHY isn't just targeting pretty-picture astrophotographers with this product - they also have kits for other niches. For instance, there's a miniCAM8C (color version of the camera) which comes with a "Color Deep Sky" filter set. That includes things like a UV/IR-cut filter for general use, a light pollution filter, a stronger dual-band or "high light pollution" filter for emission nebulae, and even a 4-channel multi-band filter (which I suspect captures Hα, Hβ, OIII, and maybe SII simultaneously for the color sensor). So if someone wants the simplicity of one-shot color but still benefit from some light pollution suppression, the color miniCAM8 provides that. Additionally, QHY has a Planetary Combo (with UV/IR, methane band, and other specialty filters for imaging planets) and a Sloan Photometry Combo (with standard u′, g′, r′, i′, z′ photometric filters) available. This modular approach is fantastic - it means the miniCAM8 platform can serve a beginner imager, a casual planet observer, or even a student doing variable star measurements, all with the same core device but different filter sets.

Of course, since the filters are a custom size, you are tied to what QHY produces. You can't swap in your favorite 3 nm ultra-narrowband filters unless QHY decides to make a set in this small format. This might be a limitation for the more advanced imagers out there. For most of us, the included 7 nm filters do a fine job, and they strike a balance between performance and affordability.

QHY miniCAM8 Camera Review: Field Test Results

Spec sheets and features are great, but the proof is in the night sky pudding. I took the miniCAM8 out for several nights with different telescopes to put it through its paces. My first outing was with a small 60 mm refractor (a fast f/5.5 scope) on a star tracker mount, to simulate the kind of ultra-portable setup a beginner might use. I was immediately grateful for the one-cable design during setup - I had my little scope, the miniCAM8 attached to it, one USB going to my laptop, and one power cable to a battery pack. No separate guider or filter wheel cables dangling around. As someone who has spent many a cold night troubleshooting why a filter wheel isn't talking to the computer or why PHD2 can't see the guide camera, this simplicity was refreshing.

Connecting to software (I primarily used NINA and SharpCap for testing) was straightforward. QHY's all-in-one driver meant the camera and filter wheel were recognized together. In NINA's equipment list, I just selected the QHY miniCAM8 for the camera and the filter wheel, and the software could switch filters and take exposures without any hiccups. I created a filter profile matching the loaded filters (labeled L, R, G, B, Ha, OIII, SII in the software) and was ready to go.

The target I chose to start with was the Orion Nebula (M42), a bright and familiar object that I've shot many times with different gear. I figured it's a good test of dynamic range and also a test of how the camera handles color combination (since M42 has a broad range of colors and intensities). I spent a while dialing in focus with a Bahtinov mask on a bright star using the luminance filter. Once focus was sharp, I began an imaging sequence: a few minutes through each of R, G, and B filters for color data, plus some shorter exposures for the core of Orion (to avoid blowing out the trapezium stars), and also a couple of longer Hα exposures to see if I could pull out the faint outer nebula. The camera dutifully cycled through the filters as commanded. Because the filters are parfocal and my little refractor has good color correction, I didn't need to refocus between filter changes - the stars remained pinpoints.

When I reviewed the raw subframes, I was impressed. The luminance and Hα frames in particular showed a level of crispness I wasn't used to seeing with my older one-shot-color camera. Fine details in the nebula's gas clouds were popping out even in the unstretched, unprocessed images. One of the color frames (the blue channel) did show some bloated stars, but I quickly realized that was due to my telescope (a simple doublet refractor) struggling with blue focus, not the camera or filter's fault. This highlights a practical point: the miniCAM8 will reveal limitations in your optics if they exist, because the monochrome sensor is effectively higher resolution. In my case, the cure was to either use a filter that cuts deep blue or just know that I might need to do a bit of star reduction in the blue channel later. If you have an apochromatic refractor or use filters that mitigate chromatic aberration, this likely won't be an issue.

After stacking and processing the Orion Nebula images, the result honestly floored me for a camera in this price range. The detail level was comparable to images I had taken with much more expensive setups. Faint wisps in the outer nebula that I usually could only get with long Hα exposures were visible even in the shorter integrations I did. The core region had a natural color gradient from the combined LRGB data, and thanks to the HDR sensor, the bright core wasn't blown out - I could see the individual trapezium stars. To put it in perspective, I held it side-by-side with a shot of Orion I had from a popular smart telescope (which also uses a version of the IMX585, but in color). The difference was clear: the smart scope image was good for a one-click result, but it looked softer and missed some of the subtle structures that the miniCAM8 pulled in. And that makes sense: the smart scope was essentially doing 10-second stacked JPEGs with a color sensor, while here I was doing proper long exposures in mono and combining them - more effort, but a better picture.

I later switched to my 8" Ritchey–Chrétien telescope (at ~1200 mm focal length) to see how the miniCAM8 handled a longer focal length and smaller field. The small sensor means the field of view is narrow (with my 1200 mm scope, it's like looking through a straw - great for small targets like planetary nebulae or galaxies, but you're not going to capture the whole Andromeda Galaxy unless you use a very short focal length lens or assemble a mosaic). I targeted the Crab Nebula (M1) which fit nicely in the frame. Over two nights I captured a set of Hα, OIII, and SII images (to do a false-color narrowband composite). Everything went smoothly, although I did run into one issue: my mount's guiding had a hiccup the first night that turned out to be due to a loose USB port on the laptop (not the camera's fault). One port for everything means you have to ensure that connection is solid. After switching cables and ports, I had no further disconnects. The guiding issue got sorted out and I was able to get 5-minute subs that were round and tight.

Processing the Crab Nebula in narrowband was a joy. The data from the miniCAM8's 7 nm filters was clean. Stars were mostly tight and didn't show halos, with one exception: the OIII filter did produce a faint halo around a very bright star in the field. It's the kind of minor reflection many mid-range narrowband filters have, especially around stars of magnitude 2–3 or brighter. In my case, the bright star ζ Tauri (near the Crab Nebula) had a subtle bluish halo in the OIII frames. It wasn't severe and was easy to minimize in processing, but it's worth noting for those who absolutely hate any halos - if that's you, you might eventually crave upgrading to premium filters. For everyone else (myself included), a slight halo on a super-bright star is a non-issue considering the overall image quality and the price point of these filters.

The final narrowband image turned out detailed and sharp. I even drizzled the images during stacking to effectively increase resolution (taking advantage of those tiny pixels), and the result held up - fine filaments in the nebula were clearly resolved. It's amazing to think I was getting this result with a camera that costs under $1000 including the filters. I recall paying more than that for just a monochrome CCD head back in the early 2000s (with far fewer pixels and needing expensive 2" filters). This little device would have blown my mind in those days, and even now it feels a bit revolutionary.

Comparing Value and Use Cases

It's important to consider who the miniCAM8 is for and how it stacks up against other options. For roughly $999 (at the time of writing) you get the monochrome camera plus the filter wheel and a full LRGB+HaOIIISII filter set. The color version of the camera is about $799 with its own filter set. Compare this to a typical mono astrophotography setup: a mid-range cooled mono camera (like one with a larger APS-C sensor) might be $1,600 or more on its own, a filter wheel another $200, and a decent set of 36mm filters can easily run $400–800 (or much more if you go for premium narrowbands). Suddenly you're at $2,500–3,500 for the whole kit, and that's a big barrier for beginners. The miniCAM8 undercuts that dramatically.

Because the IMX585 sensor is so popular, and popular enough that ZWO chose it for their new S30 Pro telescope, I thought it would make an excellent comparison for anyone who is just purchasing the new smart telescope but may eventually want to take things further with a dedicated imaging rig using the same sensor.

The S30 Pro features a 160 mm focal length telescope, while the images below were captured with our miniCAM8 paired with an Askar FRA600. The difference is immediately obvious. The IMX585 is an incredibly capable sensor, and when it is placed behind high quality glass, especially at longer focal lengths, it truly shines. Its performance is outstanding. The miniCAM8 provides a extrememly durable, cooled enclosure for the chip.

Now, it's true that the miniCAM8's sensor is smaller than, say, the popular 16 MP APS-C sensors or even the 9 MP 1-inch sensors out there. So you are trading field of view for cost. If you love capturing huge swaths of sky (like the Orion wide field or the North America Nebula all in one frame), this camera will feel a bit constrained unless you pair it with a very short focal length lens or assemble a mosaic of images. On the flip side, the small pixels and small sensor make it a "galaxy killer" on modest telescopes - for many galaxies, planetary nebulae, and smaller nebula targets, it provides ample resolution and puts lots of pixels on the object without needing a long focal length. In many ways, it's ideal for those using refractors in the 200 mm to 600 mm range who want good sampling.

For someone currently using a DSLR or a color astronomy camera and considering the jump to mono, the miniCAM8 is a gentle way to step into that world. It simplifies what used to be a complex system. There's no fussing with connecting a separate filter wheel or remembering to plug in an extra USB - you treat it like one device. And because it's mono, if you outgrow it, the skills you learn (filter imaging, processing LRGB and narrowband data) will transfer directly to any higher-end mono setup you might eventually move to.

In terms of competition, there aren't many direct competitors in this exact niche right now. One could assemble a similar kit from separate components (for instance, a ZWO ASI585MC color camera is out there, but that one is uncooled and color-only). ToupTek and a few other astro-camera makers have started offering IMX585 mono cameras, but again, you'd have to add your own filter wheel and filters. QHY's integration here is unique and the pricing is aggressive. The closest concept was maybe something like the old Starlight Xpress bundles or ZWO's mini cameras with bolt-on filter wheels, but even those didn't include all the filters in one go. The miniCAM8 really stands alone for the moment as the "bundled monochrome starter kit."

Final Thoughts

After spending some quality time with the QHY miniCAM8, I find myself both impressed and a little nostalgic. Impressed, because this camera delivers exactly what it promises: genuine monochrome astrophotography power in a user-friendly, affordable package. And nostalgic, because it reminds me how far the hobby has come. I remember manually changing filters in a filter wheel on a cold night, trying not to drop a $300 filter in the dark, and here I am now with a robot mini-wheel changing tiny filters inside a cooled CMOS that runs off a single USB cable. If I could send this back in time to my younger self, he'd probably faint.

Is the miniCAM8 perfect? Not quite - but its flaws are minor in my view. The reliance on proprietary filter sizes is the biggest long-term consideration; you're tied to QHY's ecosystem for any additional filters. There's also the fact that if one part of the system fails (say the filter wheel motor), you'd have to service or replace the whole unit, not just a separate piece. That said, QHY has a good reputation for support, and there's a simplicity in having it all-in-one that likely reduces the chance of failures (fewer cables and connections). The small sensor won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it hits a sweet spot for beginners and folks with small scopes. And as a nitpick, I do hope QHY can tweak the firmware to allow the cooling fan speed to be controlled or at least idle when not cooling full blast - it's not a big issue, but a nice-to-have for those of us setting up gear indoors or doing testing.

In use, the miniCAM8 was a delight. It made monochrome imaging nearly as convenient as one-shot-color, which is a huge compliment. I always tell newcomers that mono will give better results if they're willing to put in the effort - now I can also tell them that the effort (and cost) required is a lot less than it used to be, thanks to innovations like this. It's often said in our hobby: once you go mono, it's hard to go back to color. With the miniCAM8, I think a lot more people will get to experience why that is.

In plain terms, QHY has lowered the entry barrier to serious astrophotography. They've packaged up a very sensitive modern sensor, a capable cooling system, and a versatile filter wheel into a compact device that just works. And they did it without it feeling like a toy - it's genuinely a tool you can grow with. In my book, that makes the QHY miniCAM8 a winner for anyone eager to dive deeper into astrophotography and reveal the universe's colors one wavelength at a time.

Ring Nebula from Nico Carver using the miniCam8 mono bundle