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Hi Ian,
you are best to get a hold of an illuminated cross-hair reticle eyepice for manual guiding in any telescope, providing that you can control both drive axes of course.
Believe it or not there are some of us that haven't passed it all onto robots! My young protege, Rhiannon McNish, is seen in the first picture guding on a star through the off-axis guiding eyepiece of the Palmerston North Atronomical Society's 30cm f/7 Newtonian at the Manawatu Observatory in the Lower North Island of New Zealand. Rhiannon is carrying on a tradition of hands-on film photography at our observatory that goes back to 1985.
The other photos attached are from last friday night also. All are using off the shelf Fuji Superia 200 ISO film. The negs were scanned and the digital image improved slightly from there. M 42 was a 15 minute exposure, whilst NGC 2070 and NGC 3293 & 3324 were 20 minutes.
The Fuji Seperia 200 ISO film is the best that I have encountered in over 35 years of active astrononmy. A 12 shot roll is only $6.90 here in N.Z. Peocessing is under $10! Some of the ikjet printers available are better than the professional lab results.
The only thing, and a very critical thing, that we didn' nail down was perfect focus! We can do better.
Cheers
Ian
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