Gary, you don't mention a mount in your list but i will assume you have one. As a fellow retiree i too debate every dollar spent, and have found that staying clear of the high priced brands can give you a scope every bit as good for your purpose. Have a look at the range of very nice Photoline APO refractors sold by Teleskop-Express in Germany:
https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop...elescopes.html
Many of these refractors use FPL-53 glass elements in the objective, which is better in terms of colour correction than most other elements,and equal on Abbe numbers to the revered Flourite used in some Takahashi refractors. I would suggest looking at the Triplet APOs, and TS have three in the 102-107mm aperture range that might suit your purposes; they all come with strong rack and pinon focusers that easily support and hold imaging equipment. Whatever your final choice keep in mind that a reducer corrector is valuable for increasing the "speed" of the scope and/or to widen the field.
I should note that i own two TS Photoline APOs and the quality of components, the build, and performance, are very good imho.
Have fun.