mounting DSLR on EQ3-2: how ? saddle? dovetail bar?

[knoo]

Hello everyone, 

I am a complete beginner and have recently got my hands back on an old Sky watcher EQ3-2 mount that I bought many years ago but never used but I am struggling a bit figuring out witch part I still need and get it ready to take some pictures of milky way, moon, or other easiest objects ( deep sky, we'll see after that I'll start easy !)
My goal for now is to attach a DSLR ( I do have a few ultra wide angle, a 50mm 1.2, a 85 1.2 and an extremely cheap 650-1300 f/8 lens, not sure if this one will be usable for astro ) 

So far, I figured I obviously need something to polar align. I found this.
I also intend to replace the old motor batteries holder with a lithium battery (and a cheap voltage regulator I guess ?).

And I should be almost good to go, but my main problem is attaching the DSLR onto the mount. 
I don't know what to buy (or make, if easy enough). I am guessing that the word for what I need is a "saddle" ? and then I would need a "dovetail" female thing part, and then a dovetail bar that I can screw the dslr on ?..  I am lost with terminology and parts names

So that you can see what I am talking about, attached here are 3 pictures of: the EQ3-2 "head" I currently have, and also a piece of metal with a thread I made from an old spare part so I can still use it in the meantime, but it's far from perfect: it's a bit loose, and more important, it's difficult to align the lens and the prevent rotation of the camera. I guess it's good enough for milky way / 50mm, but I'll never be able to use deeper focal length that way.

So in other words, my goal is to replace that solution/piece I made, with something better. 

So.. any help, link, pointer would be greatly appreciated ! 

[happy-kat]

Hi

You might like this post as all about your mount and you might see images showing how members have mounted their gear.

Link here

A red dot finder mounted on your camera flash hot shoe is useful. And for focusing as I use a canon I connect it to my phone and use DSLR Controller to control and focus the camera it's a great help as I don't use a laptop and it's nice and small, I've also used a small Android tablet.

[knoo]

Hi,

Thank you.
I will go and look trough the 50+ pages of this post, it'll take some time 🙂 But it seems there are some amazing pictures in it ! 

Also thanks for the red dot finder tip.  Is that useful even with a goto remote ? And can I mount a (powerful) green laser pointer instead (which I already have), or is it not the same use ?

I'll try using the canon app as well ( until I remove the filter of an old canon body that doesn't have any connectivity that is ). I just went from a 5D3 to an EOS R, so I'm not yet used to all those wifi/remote modern stuff .

Thanks again ! 

[JamesF]

As it appears your EQ3-2 accepts a dovetail (the older models used to just have mountings for telescope rings), I'd get a short dovetail and either fix a ball head with a quick release camera mount to it, or fix a quick release mount directly to the dovetail, and then fit the camera on that.  Alternatively if you're using a bigger lens with its own mount, fix the lens mount to the dovetail.

James

[knoo]

Hi James, 

Thank you, I don't know why I didn't notice the angled bit for a dovetail on the mount. Dovetail + quick release solution seems perfect ! Easy and (relatively) inexpensive.