Fast Newt advice

[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

Greetings antipodean gazers!
I have had some recent extra fundage to spend and I was thinking (apart from getting my EQ 6 fixed) about one of those imaging newts at Andrews F4 I recall. Would make a nice family with the SCT & refractor!
Now I have a few questions
1. I have read the collimation article here and elsewhere but still a little confused, so for a newbie to Newts, especially fast ones, what is the absolute essential item/s to collimate (everyone seems to have an opinion on this hence the befuzzlement) i.e cheshire/cats eye/ez etc
I ma canvassing opinions here not articles as I am still thinking after reading these that I would need both a Cheshire and a barlowed very expensive laser?
2. Although sold with a 'solid 3" 10/1 focuser what's the deal with using it with DSLR's (my main interest currently)-what happens if there is not enough forward focus? do you have to replace the whole focuser? presuming you can always add ext tubes for the opposite issue
3. there is no third question
Of course once acquired I will be trawling IIS for the dew solutions etc
Once again I thank you all in advance
graham

[bartman (Bart)]

Hi Trevor,
1)No idea to the question as to which item to use, but I use an Orion collimator and had a bit of a wobbly issue in the old SW focuser. It works well/ok for a noob. But in my new Moonlite focuser it seemed more solid and therefore seemed more confidant that I got the collimation right......which brings me to ....
2) I did buy a Moonlite focuser which has ( or can have ) a lower profile due to the adapter plates and shorter draw tubes which can be interchanged depending on what you need .....
3) what the Gekko said!!!

HTH
Bartman

[dannat (Daniel)]

Imaging at f4 you will needc the pro collimation tools; either cats eye or astrosystems.

It should handle a d-slr, it's the bid imaging ccd's which really needvthe upgraded focuser or if you have something like a canon 1d which weighs about 1.4kg