Hi all,
I have a Skywatcher BD ED100 scope sitting on a HEQ5 that I attach a EOS 70D to. I've never been super happy with the crayford focuser on it - it's never felt secure and despite reading guides and tinkering with it it's quite unusable in a a lot of the time especially pointing up past about 70 deg alt. I've currently got a ZWO EAF attached to it for auto focus but it's more or less useless at this point.
I'm no longer interested in trying to make the stock crayford work for my purposes and want to upgrade to something that can reliably handing decent image train weight (for future expansion, I don't want to buy again if I eventually progress to using filters or OAG etc).
So far the two options that stand out to me are:
1. Prima Luca Labs Esatto 2" focuser + PLL ED100 adaptor + various extension tubes.
2. 2" Feathertouch rack and pinion focuser (FTF2020BCR) +
adaptor to stick the EAF on it.
Issues I can see are:
Option 1 doesn't seem like something many people use and the posts I have found are often asking for help getting them to work. The Prima Luce Labs stuff looks great and I thoroughly enjoy their youtube videos but it seems like less of a sure thing?
Option 2 seems a bit hacky with the adaptor and from what I've read the wait time is pretty long (6mo) and communication as to status of the order is poor. However universally praised quality and function.
Both end up being about $1500 Australian.
I'm also open to upgrading the whole telescope to something that gets me an increase in focal length (765mm ish with the flattener reducer on the BD100) if I can still hang the DSLR off it and have the focuser work sufficiently.
Any suggestions? I found an option potentially from Baader but I can't quite work out the adaptor for it to attach it to my BD100 so haven't included it in the list.
