Ahhh heed the words of wisdom, spend your money's wizely. I have had the lucky chance to have a university foot my obsession so far, although this is great things are sometimes slow and arduouse...
From experience you can get away with some of the other things like guide scopes and what not. But if you are in the city and cannot make it to dark sites often like i always say... get a GOTO because i live in the suburbs of Perth, and i can tell you now there isn't a star in sight where the taranchula neb is and to boot its a bright nebula that can be spotted in dark skies by the naked eye/binos. Try finding it with no stars to guide you with... hard.
In saying that I use the meade 12" and the major thing that has let the system down is its Mount.!!! you can deal with Light pollution, and mediocure equipment. but when you have blurry pictures to show for it you could have the worlds best telescope/DSLR/guiding system and it means nothing unless your scope is rock solid.!
So heed the words of the guys who have done it for a long time and remember to set yourself up ready to go astro photograpy path you will not get change out of 5k if your starting from scratch, and thats just the start, with something like a ED80, a small CCD cam ,guidescope/CCD guider,a little EQ5 and a budgo laptop. but you wont get change out of about 10-15 if you want to do it right!!! a good DSLR is looking in the 2k+ region!
. Start at the bottom and work your way up. overkill is better than underkill.
