Opinions and expertise required

[ken_in_arco]

This is the first of what hopefully will not be a long list of questions to help me decide on my set-up.

I'm down to a short list of four possibles and would like to know what other people's experiences are with these items and which would be best suited.

I'm looking for something that will be useful for visual and imaging with a DSLR and preferably something that is relatively portable by one person (with a car though)

The suspects so far (in no particular order) are:

Skywatcher MN190 with EQ6 pro mount

Celestron CPG 800 XLT

Skywatcher Explorer 250P with EQ6 Pro

Orion SPX 250 F4.8 with a yet to be determined mount

I know none of these are at the cheaper end of the market bit they are at least far cheaper than the Canon 500 F4L IS I keep on lusting after ( and getting told I can't have by my chief financial officer......or wife as she's better known)

[steve51450]

hi

i presume as you are imaging with a dslr you will looking to image deep sky

if that is the case, out of those i would have the 190mm mak newt as it is a fast optical system on a sturdy mount that can be guided and will take the extra weight of a guide scope as well. On top of this it is a corrected flat field so will suit the aps chip of a dslr camera very well. Just throw the dovetail that comes with it back in the box and buy a good quality one from the start, adm or something like that as that will stop flexure from the start!

All the others will need a coma corrector to work with that size chip which is another £130