ZWO is on fire

good day Dylan from the baron Bay Observatory here uh I just wanted to have a quick chat about Brands uh astronomy Brands telescope Brands camera brands because I ran an interesting poll on Twitter just yesterday and the day before actually uh and the first question I asked was which of these four popular telescope Brands is your favorite skywatcher Celestron me and explore scientific which Google seemed to think were the four major players but obviously on two of those are major players me has sort of really nose died since their Peak popularity back in the ' 80s '90s um I don't know much about explore scientific at all people in the comments sounded off um huge support for William Optics and of course the Takahashi snobs as well had to chime in Celestron was the clear winner at 51% with skywatcher coming second with 37% that's really telling I I don't use skywatcher stuff for Optics but I use their mounts and and I love their mounts and actually no regrets in using both the star Adventurer and the E8 RH Pro in the observatory fantastic stuff but Celestron and me used to be the two main players and now it's Celestron skywatcher is it a monopoly you know there's the unspoken Open Secret that all of this stuff comes from the same manufacturer the same factories in China but they serve these Global markets for our hobby so it really doesn't matter who wins the skywatcher Celestron race but on the camera front I asked what popular brand of astronomical why is this such a tongue twister what popular brand of astronomical camera would you choose today for deep space planets zwo qhy adct and alter uh again really only two major players in that list zwo and qhy but this vote same number of results about over 300 people replied to the poll zwo got 78% of the vote now zwo were a small company when I started in this hobby they really weren't even on the everyone was using qhy sban adct and I've got to say as a company zwo is on fire uh when I compare their range of products to to um other camera manufacturers zwo have really transitioned from just being a camera company into being almost a software company because sear and the cameras and the Asia this all the hardware is sort of incidental it's the software that's really driving everything and the integration between all the parts when I looked at their presentation at NE it got me thinking NE this year it got me thinking that Z wo seem to be the only company that are rapidly innovating in the space I might not agree with all the stuff they doing I'm not an ASI air user myself I don't know if there's any wisdom in integrating the ASI air into a camera like they've done but we're seeing these dual chip cameras we're seeing the ASI air Integrations we're seeing automatic telescopes whereas all the other automatic telescope brands are just automatic telescope Brands they're not camera companies and software companies and Telescope companies and mount companies zwo has really transitioned from being a camera company into a complete astronomy brand and this has happened really recently so credit to Sam Wen um the decisions they've made have really paid off for them and even though in my last video I was saying that the automatic telescope sort of thing isn't for me um I wasn't like attacking sear or anything like that but I'd had hordes of comments from Angry sear fans it it it's like i' pissed in their cornflakes or something trust me I I don't mind if you uh if you guys love your sea star that's great and and I'm sure this space is going to get better and better and better over time there has developed uh a really good brand loyalty for zwo and more than one comment actually said I like the red and I get it I the aesthetic is especially when you're kiding out a whole astronomy rig it's nice to have everything matchy matchy doesn't make a difference I don't go out into the observatory but it's like a pride parade in there Celestron orange the white pearl Celestron the black of the sky Watcher the purple of the qhy which I love and the red of the zwo stuff yeah it's pretty colorful and I like being able to use a bit of it anything really I do remember early on when I was a beginner I was like I really want everything to be white and then I got a black telescope like oh man now I need to change everything to black but it does seem like some people like the cool factor of the red and it is a cool color there's some there's some weird ad running what the what is this that was meant to be a zwo background I'm sorry if um I've just accidentally broadcast ads yeah but uh I do have to say zwo is not without its controversy there have been manufacturing controversies in the past with um the fans uh shaking and vibrating the whole image TR which was then causing people's images to be blurry when it was cooled there was reflection gate where the uh codings weren't right and people were getting Square Reflections all over their stuff but I think that is a symptom of a company that is rapidly iterating and rapidly innovating and it does seem especially in this space that every year we have a new sensor new camera new features um I do prefer the build quality of the qhy theyve had less of those sorts of controversies over time um they're not without their controversies as well and and mistakes along the way but generally I found them really solid however I have used a lot of ZW and still continue to use a lot of ZW gear as well and I can't fault them for that rapid iteration because that is something which is driving them internally and it's this ability to make new decisions and new choices and new ideas and try them and see which one flies and so I'm glad that zwo is in this space and I love to see that Innovation what I have to compare it to myself is in the Guitar World there are obviously Fender and Gibson the two main status quo Brands and the problem that they have is they're so locked into this old customer base of rich people who like to play guitars they are victims of their own success in that they cannot innovate anymore if they try and change the Gibson pole design or the fender stratocast or Telecaster design people freak out they don't have The Bravery to do new things on a guitar which smaller companies can then do and capture that market and zwo feels like one of those smaller companies who has just done a lot of cool stuff recently and are really testing to see where it can go so I'm really excited to see what happens with ZW as a company and skywatcher and all the new innovations that we have in astronomy right now including the strain wave mounts and the and camera features that were considered professional you know you'd spent 10 grand on a camera back in the day to get a dual chip and now this is coming down to the consumer level it's really fantastic what I would like to see from any camera brand is this idea of active Optics but I might do a video on that separately but nobody talks about it anymore on the other thing with zwo is that their original website was astronomy hyen IM inyen camera.com which is the most early 2000s SEO website domain name you could have I'm sure it's a good domain name and I'm sure they get some SEO traffic from it astronomy Imaging camera doesn't really summarize them as a company at all so now they have ZW astro.com which is a little bit more all-encompassing for their the whole offering between mounts telescopes adapters software automatic telescopes cameras and qy has the similar issue in that their company is literally called qhyccd so that sort of locks you into just doing one thing CCD cameras and and CCD cameras is not where the market is anymore such a great company to work with I've never had any problems with their customer service and I get mixed reviews from the community for both companies so there are people that will never use ZW over again because of the customer service and there are people who love ZW customer service and vice versa for qy so horses for courses everyone has their experiences and vendors have their experiences with the brands I'm not sure about the business side of things like how zwo positions its brands with vendors or anything like that um I'm just a user so all I can say is I've used both cameras zwo and qy and they both work great anyway let me know what you think why does zwo have such uh near Monopoly on the popularity of camera sales right now and what can other camera brands do to catch up to what zwo is doing and if we go down this route of one brand being the brand and is that a bad thing or as long as it's ascom compliant we can still use their Gear with other stuff as well I don't know I don't have the answers but it will be interesting to see where it goes any I've got a new video coming soon I'm just waiting on um a sponsor to approve what I've done offended anyone hopefully and I got a really great new photo to show you as well so more from the barn Bay Observatory shortly that's it my name is Dylan o and you've been watching Star stuff and remember everything is meaningless and we're all going to die [Music] I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about this channel cringe mid my kids don't respect me they won't respect me until I reach 100,000 subscribers on this channel and get the silver play button so please like And subscribe I stuffed up I stuffed up smile

Channel: Dylan O'Donnell

Views: 22,905

Keywords: zwo, cameras, astrophotography

Id: EWa7yOUEYKo

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024