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Welcome aboard, I've been setting up for astrophotography now and had my first bit of success last night on M42 in Orion.
I totally agree that a great mount is probably your best asset. You also need to learn how to polar align and drift aling for a german equatorial mount.
My set up at the moment (which is limited by my mount) is:
Cartes Du Ceil (CDC) for my sky map (rather than Meade Autostar or Celestron NexStar)
Ascom drivers to let CDC drive my mount
80MM Meg Refractor piggybacked on a 235mm Celestron SCT
Celestron CG5 mount on a home built permanent pier in a home built astro lab
Meade Motor Drive -> JMI USB connector for fine focus of the SCT
PC for sky map, telescope control, camera control, focus control and auto-guiding
Meade DSI used on either scope normally as the Auto-guider (using PHD Guide freeware software and a Shoe String Astronomy Parallel Port cable adapter)
Canon 400D for photography connected by a Canon adapter and teleconnector
Canon shutter currently controlled over USB but I will move to a shoe string astronomy "Bulb focuser" cable for shots > 30 seconds under the control of either DSLR Shutter or DSLR focus
Canon picture parameters (ISO, piccy quality, white balancing etc) controlled over USB by Canon EOS driver remote software
Canon picture acquisition using their Zoom Browser software
Adobe CS Photoshop for image processing
Registax - for still stacking.
So alot of wiring and proprietary hardware and software to integrate.
The key things I have found is
1. you need a really sturdy mount, very carefully aligned to the South Celestial Pole (SCP)
2. focus is critical - it will take time to master
3. auto guiding means you can take longer shots. An autoguider is a feedback loop where one of the two cameras tracks a selected star falling on a selected pixel, and it keeps it there for the duration of your shot, addressing all minor mount movements cause by errors in your mounts mechanical gears or SCP alignment
4. you need to operate without having to touch the scope to avoid vibration once you are on target and gathering light onto your CCD.
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