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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
12-22-2018, 01:08 PM
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For the moon you will be using short exposures and can get away with almost any tripod and ball head, as long as you're within weight limits. Long exposures for deep sky objects need some sort of motorized mount or the Pentax astrotracer. The astrotracer is good for relatively wide field; at long focal lengths finding targets becomes more challenging and you have to keep manually recentering your target.
- Modular: normal tripod, EQ tracker (iOptron Skytracker or similar), ballhead. You'll often have the camera and lens pointed upwards which puts all the weight on on side of the ballhead, so get a better ballhead than you think you need.
- Dedicated EQ mount with counterweight: This may well be less expensive and better than the modular approach. Why better? Counterweights improve balance and tracking, motors lets you stay on target for multiple photos (stacking) after you find an object, goto capability helps you find dim targets. Downsides are that they are heavier and take longer to setup. I don't have this but here's the least expensive one I saw at B&H Explore Scientific EXOS-2GT Motorized Equatorial GoTo FL-EXOS2GT
In my experience, at 100mm or wider the astrotracer or modular approach work great. At 300mm the EQ mount starts to show its benefits.
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