Robert_T
20-05-2008, 09:24 PM
Hi All, after a couple of weeks of thought (more than I usually give such things) and tossing up this over that, I lashed out today and bought a York Optical ED80 to couple with my Canon 40D for deep sky imaging (please forgive me all my planetary pals:D).
What's a York Optical ED80? Well some pics attached give an idea. It's a rebadged "something" by York obviously. The build quality and finish makes it look like one of the Orion Eon ED80s... close to quality of a WO ED80, but not quite.
It comes with a nice alum case, mounting rings and dovetail bar, sliding dewshield and 2 speed focusser with mm readout. It all feels pretty solid and smooth. I star-tested tonight and was very pleased - as close to perfect concentric in an out of focus as I could tell at ~150x. Moon wasn't high enough to try colour correction test.
I'd actually decided on the Skywatcher ED80 which York has for $499 at the moment and was going in to pick it up. The York Optical was sitting next to it, and, well :P. Retails for $999, but I got them down a looong way on that, with Canon EOS ring and T-adaptor extender into the bargain, so I'm pretty happy.
It's also slightly faster at F7, 560mm FL instead of 600mm with the skywatcher. I'm hoping with 0.8x flattener this will be a great little scope to start my DSLR imaging career with.
Now I just gotta get brave enough to put the camera on it:whistle:
cheers,
Rob
What's a York Optical ED80? Well some pics attached give an idea. It's a rebadged "something" by York obviously. The build quality and finish makes it look like one of the Orion Eon ED80s... close to quality of a WO ED80, but not quite.
It comes with a nice alum case, mounting rings and dovetail bar, sliding dewshield and 2 speed focusser with mm readout. It all feels pretty solid and smooth. I star-tested tonight and was very pleased - as close to perfect concentric in an out of focus as I could tell at ~150x. Moon wasn't high enough to try colour correction test.
I'd actually decided on the Skywatcher ED80 which York has for $499 at the moment and was going in to pick it up. The York Optical was sitting next to it, and, well :P. Retails for $999, but I got them down a looong way on that, with Canon EOS ring and T-adaptor extender into the bargain, so I'm pretty happy.
It's also slightly faster at F7, 560mm FL instead of 600mm with the skywatcher. I'm hoping with 0.8x flattener this will be a great little scope to start my DSLR imaging career with.
Now I just gotta get brave enough to put the camera on it:whistle:
cheers,
Rob