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Similar story to all of you that've replied, visual astronomy is the simplest, cheapest way to enjoy our hobby, pastime, obsession, whatever you want to call amateur astronomy. Although I do dabble with cameras occasionaly and quite often when I go observing with the club, I will take the dob, first scope in the car, then I'll take an EQ and a mid sized refractor and camera gear for a few happy snaps, widefield mainly, easier to manually guide.
Visual always is my first love though, the thrill of the chase,so to speak, studying observing lists and charts and then star hopping until the object is "found" or sometimes not, when it's on the limits of what my scope and the seeing conditions will allow. Just the beauty and the wonder of the gossamer glow of faint nebula or faint fuzzy galaxies that are tens of millions of light years away or the countless pinpricks of light of an globular cluster or teasing out the colours of many double star systems and therefore the stars temperatures and so on and so on.
Just sitting back on a clear night and taking in the panorama of the stars while having a break from the eyepiece is as rewarding as any telescopic view.
Jeff
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