Putting lens on a dovetail

sejanus (Gavin) · #1 09-10-2007, 02:47 PM

hey

not sure if I'm missing something obvious here

as previously mentioned I want to bolt my biggish 200mm lens onto a GEM.

The lens is too heavy to piggyback off the back of a 80ED

I rang a couple of stores and they could only suggest mounting it on rings which i don't like the idea of with a expensive lens.

Is there a way/adapter/whatever to mount the tripod leg of the lens (standard screw size for cameras, the exact same screw hole that is on the base of most slr's) _directly_ to the eq6 dovetail or dovetail plate?

hope i have my terminology right

RB (Andrew) · #2 09-10-2007, 03:04 PM

Yes there is Gav, I did it recently with the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 to take this Orion widefield shot.

I first polar aligned using the scope, then took it off and bolted a Losmandy bar to the EM200.
Then I used another bolt to attach a Manfrotto Ball Head to it so I could attach the camera.

sejanus (Gavin) · #3 09-10-2007, 08:32 PM

where did u buy the bits?

RB (Andrew) · #4 09-10-2007, 09:45 PM

You can get the Losmandy dovetail plate from Bintel and the bolts from Bunnings.