Glen’s final point seemed to nail the matter very succinctly.
He said:
“
It is simple to get started with a DSLR and a tripod, until you look closely or try to enlarge it”.
The main decision that I need to make is how far down that line of quality in the fine detail that I’d like to go. Or to put it another way - how fussy am I likely to get?
Obviously, it’s not always possible to predict the path in advance, and indeed discovering and developing your preferences along the way is half the fun. But, so far at least, I’ve not felt any motivation to get into the deeper end of astrophotography. Whether I'd become interested in that aspect was still an unknown when I began, but so far it still looks like I’m unlikely to get into serious tracking, stacking and in depth post-processing. There’s nothing much to be gained by categorically ruling it out for the future, but it’s just not something I’ll be spending either time or money on at this stage.
For me, the main point of taking both wider and moderately closer shots is to help with pattern recognition - which I’m usually pretty weak at. Especially when the patterns involve a few billion white dots..
Some people (my son for instance) are fantastic at retaining visual information, but I’m not. I can look at Stellarium and see the patterns clearly enough and then lose much of the mental picture as soon as I look at the actual night sky. What works (for me) is to keep doing it over and over in different ways until it sticks. I.e. Screenshots from Stellarium and SkySafari (at different rotations) plus my own pictures at different magnifications and rotations, and then the night sky with different scopes and/or eyepieces, etc. Rinse and repeat until it becomes familiar. Some like the Southern Cross and the tail of the Scorpion are easy, but others are requiring a lot of work. But it’s interesting work.
Of course I could use a Goto, and that certainly has a place, but somehow it doesn't seem as satisfying.
Thanks for the input.
Suggestions from other posters would also be welcome - especially comments about specific cameras and lenses, and any relevant details of how you found they were better or worse at handling particular settings.
Cheers,
Chris