I set this up shortly after receiving the Proline camera from Mike a number of weeks ago. This is similar to Chris's QHY9 rig. I milled a double sided dovetail plate and secure the camera, robofocus belt drive and lens via Losmandy fittings. Early tests are encouraging with both a 300mm Pentatx 6x7 f4 lens and a 300mm f2,8 ED Nikkor lens. A 6" f4 CF tube newtonian is almost ready for mating to the Proline rig.
A side-by-side Casady saddle mount works very well with a guidescope added. The Proline and CFW is a very heavy camera rig, so connections have to be very secure. Just have to overcome some autoguide conversion/connection problems with the old EM200 and It will be up and running.
Great handiwork Guy, really looks like the attention to detail is spot on. Ive never thought of working with metal before, your pictures have really started me thinking about it. It would be such a boon to be able to make all the metal adaptions mostly that this hobby requires.
So now Ive got a real anticipation with regards to the first lot of images this rig produces ... cant wait.
Very cool indeed, looks well made. Be interesting to see pics from the Pentax 6x7 lens (that sounds like a pricey item) and how well the autofocus works.
Thanks to all for the encouraging comments.
I'm still at that stage of testing and tweaking (seems to be the story of my life, but I guess I enjoy that stuff). I may be up for an FS2 retrofit for the EM200b.
I thought you'd like the apple Mike. Certainly a great camera.
I think that at least something like this will make a great Ha rig - the main issues with these and other lenses and big chips seem to be either curvature, chromatic aberration or diffraction often caused by the lens diaphragm (a field stop can fix this).
The main dovetail was milled from a length of 25mm thick aluminium bar. Given the mass of the Proline I'm glad I overbuilt it. A small milling machine is a wonderful thing for making custom accessories - the best telescope accessory I own. The attached photo shows a bit more of the mounting setup from underneath.
Fred: The non ED Pentax 6x7 lenses are going very cheap these days. This is a recent 300mm I got from the US for about $400 used in mint condition. The ED version is much rarer and more like around $2-3K used (these used to be worth close to 10K new). You can almost get an old Pentax6x7 body for free these days. Not all of the Pentax lenses in the 6x7 range are known for sharpness however - most of the telephotos are very good to excellent. Since they are designed to cover 6x7cm film wide open, covering a 35mm CCD chip is not an issue. Same goes for the Hasselblad lenses - of which I also have a number to try out.
I should mention that the CFW has a special FLI Nikon adapter, an a modified Nikon-Pentax67 converter bought on Ebay to connect the 67 lens. Also have a Nikon to Hasslblad converter.