Originally posted by Arjay Bee How many tripods do you use, or do you use some other mount? Roof rack on a braced truck bed?
Just one. The MTO 1000mm f/10 is actually shorter with it's hood on than the SMC A* 400/2.8 is with its hood retracted. However the tripod I use with those monsters
is a monster it self. I built it this past summer for a bit under $50 out of some 2x4s and it is wider than it is tall and weighs in at about 60 lbs. I use an old new stock manfrotto 3047 head on it. The legs retract and fold up, and the center brace/tray comes out. The tripod easily has a safe load limit of 500 lbs but I haven't found a head that will hold that much. I am thinking of getting a gimbal head to stick on it or maybe seeing if I can just get an equatorial without tripod but I would need a pier extension so that the counter weight and shaft will clear the top of the tripod.
Originally posted by Arjay Bee See if you can get a photo of the flag on the surface so you can show it to all those moon landing sceptics.
Well tonight isn't the night as it is cloudy here and I think that is substantally smaller than the diffraction limit of that setup even if there wasn't also a hundred or so miles of turbulent atmosphere between me and the moon.