William Optics

[jaygpoo]

I am looking at a William Optics M72 FD Apo scope that is 2yrs old. They appear to be discontinued and I am wondering if the asking price of £200 is a fair price. I intend to use it for astro imaging with my cannon 500D and a philips SPC 900NC . Whould I have to buy a field flattener ? and what whould I expect to pay for one? Help needed

[Keiran]

They are good little scopes, and work well with the 500d. It will give you a great widefield image. I think £200 is about the going rate for them. I use a flattener with mine, without one you will have to crop the image. I use the william optics field flattener 2 with mine and it works well, but these are hard ti find

[scoobee]

My next purchase is going to be William Optics Zenithstar ZS71 ED 2013 with a William Optics 0.8x Reducer Flattener 6, having seen both in action and the results it seems a good set up. This might be pointless to your question but I would say the difference between your proposed scope is very little

[Eddy_J1]

200 is a good price, I bought a mint condition one with case for 240 that arrived yesterday, looking forward to using it.

[Catweazel]

That's a good price, I paid £325 for mine + flattener + case. It should work very well with your camera, and is generally a great little scope. I take mine out for visual a lot too, on nights when there is sporadic cloud cover, as it is so portable.

[Keiran]

That's a good price, I paid £325 for mine + flattener + case. It should work very well with your camera, and is generally a great little scope. I take mine out for visual a lot too, on nights when there is sporadic cloud cover, as it is so portable.

You must remember that depending on what flattener you got with it you could be looking at £100+ for that alone. But yes it is a good price. Just remember if you do decide to use a ccd with it, the scope does control the blue channel too well and you will get blue blotted stars. But its still a great little scope.