Evostar 80ED / Esprit 80ED - Worth the extra £500?

[JR1987]

Ok so ive been planning on buying a small refractor to take care of the wider field imaging, as im currently imaging on a 200PDS which is great and fast but has quite a small FOV, even with the reducer. 

Ive had my eyes set on the Evostar 80ED for a number of months.. and I brought this up in an earlier topic and something I failed to take into account was that it is f7.5, 6.37 with the flattener/reducer. Which means because ive been imaging at like 4.6 with the 200pds+flattener, 6.3 is going to be so so so slow compared to what im used to

So I was thinking about really taking the plunge and looking into the Esprit 80ED, which is at native f5. And I should hope has much improved optics.

What are the opinions here? 

[riklaunim]

Did you looked on other refractors? There is a lot of them and the Esprits are very good but also expensive . I had TSAPO65Q which is f/6.5 and it wasn't bad for imaging. No long exposures needed in general. Some refractors can use 0.8 or alike field flatteners, although if you use DSLR then you have to check if they still cover DSLR sensor size (non-reducing flattener may be needed). I was looking at even shorter, like 60/330 from TS and others, but in the end I went with Tair 3S lens (M42) which is f/4.5 at 300mm focal length and costs less than the flattener itself

And this picture is how things look at 100 mm lens and Atik 314L+.

[Highburymark]

The Equinox might be worth considering - OTA is a little over £500, F6.25, good imaging and visual scope. Esprit a step up for imaging, but maybe not £400 better.