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Some suggestions from someone who was were you are a year ago.
Thought 1 - mount matters more than scope at the end of the day
A decent (say eq 6) mount may give you more joy than a reasonable quality fork mount + star de-rotator you'll need. Plus a fork mount might not allow you to photograph at the zenith position (the gear not fitting between the bottom of the scope and the top of the mount).
An alternate is to buy a wedge so that the fork then acts like an equatorial mount set for your lattitude. But forks and longer than 2 minute astrophotography may prove challenging.
2. Suit your scope to what you wish to view
There are many objects in space and different scopes to different ones better.
If you wish to snap wide or bright objects (e.g. bright clusters Pledaides / Eta Carina or planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) a small 3" - 5" APO refractor will be kinda unbeatable, its contrast will be excellent, focus razor sharp and light gathering ability fine for use. It will also be alot easier to learn on. Many folk might go for even a $600 80mm ED refractor and get great results on these targets.
If you wish to image very faint, very narrow objects (many nebulae - e.g. the Omega Cluster) than aperature is needed and a mount solid enough to carry this weight and point very precisely for longer duration - much more expensive.
For the second option it is likely you may need option 1's scope too, piggy backed on the larger scope, and acting as a guide scope for the bigger scope to keep it dead centred (i.e. less than a 1/10 of a CCD pixel off target at any time) on the target for > 2 minutes.
So you can now see why point 1 - quality of mount is a bigger factor than optical tube.
Point 3 - light grasp is important, but so is coma and flatness of field in a large SCT.
I can testify the C9.25 is great for an SCT in both these regards, as is I've heard the heavier LX200r
Point 4 - will you opt for a permanent set-up (e.g. a pier in your backyard) or will you tripod mount it in your place, or is it a grab and go scope?
It will take you maybe 30 minutes to set-up and polar align your scope each time (once you're very experienced)if you are going into the field and doing long duration astrophotography. For visual observing or very short duration photography - set-up will likely be under < 10 minutes from power on.
Hope this helps!
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