[gregbradley]

Just narrowing down from the last thread. The 4-4.5 inch APO category is quite crowded these days.

We have a large number of brands although I think a lot are the same Chinese scopes simply rebranded.

Astrotech, Sharpstar, Teleskop Services Photoline, Stellarvue Access, William Optics and perhaps others seem similar. APM even have rebranded Chinese scopes.

Then we have the higher end 4-4.5 inch scopes.
CFF, APM, Tak, Stellarvue, Televue. Perhaps others. CFF, Tak and APM being the upper band as far as I can see. Perhaps Skyrover?? Its new and hard to find a lot about them and sample images.

If you have a 4 -4.5 inch scope how would you rate the performance of yours?

These cheaper FPL53 air spaced triplets of any brand (all Kunming optics best I can tell), how do you find their performance? Would it be hard to see any gain in astrophotography using a more expensive scope? I suspect not but I could be wrong.

In the past my policy has been to get the highest end I can as I usually found that I was unsatisfied with a lower end scope, would sell it at a loss and end getting the high end scope eventually anyway.

I am not sure though that is still the case with some nice looking offerings notably from Teleskop Services who also sell flatteners and reducers, the scopes come with a rotating focuser, various adapters, a diagonal, a case, rings, finder scope holder. Tak does not give any of those just the scope and the addons cost another $1500 or more.

I have had a Tak FS102, Tak FSQ106N, Tak FSQ106EDX3, TEC110 F5.6 fluorite triplet in this category.

I liked the TEC the best but the focuser was too light for a large Proline. Shame I sold it to get another scope but it really needs a replacement focuser as its all too light weight. The lens though was divine and lovely colour in the images. FSQ106 is a great scope but limited in its image targets at 530mm. Also no good for visual really. The FSQ106N was better for colour but worse for vignetting (a weird black bar would go through bright stars near the edges of the images). Also its focuser seemed more sturdy plus the focus lock actually worked.

The FS102 is a fluorite doublet and not really APO. Nice scope, large and heavy though for a 4 inch scope.

Greg.