greetings. 1st post
I've been looking into getting a telescope.
I'm a photographer and have lots of lovely high end canon gear. I was just wondering if I could maybe get some recommendations with astrophotography in mind. I'd prefer to not use dedicated CCD imagers but would like to use my cameras and lenses as I know them back to front and have seen great results from them by trawling the web.
So far from reading countless beginner guides and lots of web pages, I'm kinda leaning towards the meade lx200 range, either a 8" or a 10" - probably the 10. To be honest even the 12" tempted me until I saw it was 68kg - which I think might be pushing portability a bit far - though it still intrigues me.
Another option would be the celestron 11".
I'm aware all these are v.expensive but I don't want to buy a 4" or 6" and then later on wish that I had bought bigger - I live "in the sticks" and have nice dark skies and a massive garage in my backyard where I can leave the telescope permanently assembled and roll it out when needed. I will take it in the car very occasionally but this would not be common. I have a wagon and 4wd for this.
I'd be very interested in comments from those who know this stuff a lot better than me as to ;
- if the above scopes are quite good for what I want
- if a different kind would be better - i.e. not a schmidt cassegrain.
- if the celestron is better than meade or vice versa. my impression from the web articles I have found is that the celestron is better built, but it does attract a price premium and the meade is still quite decent.
- I'd be super interested if anyone in here from sydney has one of those scopes or similar and wouldn't mind letting me have a look one night.
The camera to attach would be a Canon 5D or 1Ds MK2 with probably a 35/1.4 or a 85/1.2 or a 16-35/2.8. I have other lenses but guess those are probably the relevant ones.
cheers and many thanks for any info.
Gav