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Hi Jman,
The Star adventurer is a great unit for lenses, and when honed into Polar alignment, can take some good pics with small scope, comes down to exposure length etc, as you seem to already know, :-)
One does not need a camera ball-head mount, you can point any without a ball head, there are clutches on both axis, Ra & Dec. which you loosen, when all set-up, balanced, polar aligned etc, turn the unit On, loosen clutches, twist/turn the head to point camera in desired direction, tighten clutches back up, Ready to Go !
Ive found even polar align with Heq5, neq6 mounts that the polar backlight is bright, but I do the polar align before turning any mounts on, same with star adventurer, ?
If location is dark enough to see polar stars, 'Octans' I used my red headlight,,with hand covering the light, letting a little light through a gap/s in fingers, sort thing, and move in-front of the polar scope, the objective end, not the eye end, just enough to lightly highlight the star patterns for a few seconds to get idea where to move the Alt or Azi adjusters, this way, you don't end up blinding ones dark adapted eyes 'much' if any !
You definitely need to get your tripod Level & point south a best as can before placing on the adventurer & camera/s !
One will be surprised using a very wide lens, 10-30mm and just polar aligning with a compass and inclimometer, but as with any astro imaging, practice, get to know your gear :-)
But yes, these trackers are good units and what you get in the complete package you mention, is all you need, just a camera on it and your away :-)
Hope this helps some more ,,,
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