I finally had a bit of spare time to head outside last night in the backyard to clear skies, and test the Vixen Polarie before I take it to the Kimberley's with me!
I was lucky enough to have a spare 484RC2 ball head and adapter plate, so I used this on the Polarie.
The adapter plate screwed to the bottom of the Polarie, and then sits on the normal ball head on my tripod. The second ball head screwed onto the 'camera bit' of the Polarie, and the camera has the usual adapter plate on the bottom of it.
I literally just put the tripod on the ground and pointed the Polarie roughly south. I didn't use a compass and didn't use any polar alignment techniques. I just based it off the Southern Cross.
I also just roughly set the latitude to between 30-35 - it's a pretty inaccurate scale so just set it to 'close enough'.
I then tested it with my Samyang 14mm f/2.8 and Canon 200mm f/2.8, both on the Canon 5D Mk II.
Focus was slightly off as I didn't take the time to set it properly for the test but you can't really tell at web resolution.
Samyang 14mm:
1 minute, 2 minute and 3 minute exposures @ ISO1600.
Canon 200mm:
30s exposures @ ISO3200
First lot:
Samyang 1 minute exposures.
Very quick and ugly processing of the full frame, and then a 1:1 crop of the raw image to show the stars.
Both exactly the same processing.
Not meant to be pretty pictures
1st: 1 minute no tracking
2nd: 1 minute tracking
3rd: crop no tracking
4th: crop tracking
Others coming in a sec.