--- Seth Jarvis <SJarvis@slco.org> wrote:
I own a pair of Celestron 25x100's but I never use the silly things because not even my heaviest-duty camera tripod can keep them steady. <snip> How do you guys manage these things?
Bino uberobserver Edz has a good article covering mounts for big binos at Cloudynights.com http://cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1344 My experience with 20x70s and a homemade parallelogram mount is that for low-end wood parallelograms, 20x80 is near or over the limit. Even then, a standard base tripod has to be a beefy Bogon or a true astronomical tripod. As a safety anti-tipping precaution, I also lean a sandbag against one of the tripod's feet. The industry solution for 20x100s of having the vertical post mount directly off the tripod doesn't work for astronomical use. It's okay for birding. Most peope have to crowd and stradle the tripod in an uncomfortable neck position. You can get to the bino 30-45 alt degree observing zone, but maintaining it for relaxed astronomical observing just doesn't cut it. Above that, you are looking at a $300 industrial grade metal parallelogram like at Unimount: http://www.bigbinoculars.com/unibasic.htm http://www.bigbinoculars.com/unimount.htm or a more reasonably price-point solution ($100) with a Scopestuff cradle but that has less flexibility in motion: http://www.scopestuff.com/ss_binm.htm My own evolution along these lines was to go to 20x70s with a Bogan tripod, a camera light boom-arm - http://focuscamera.com/prods/964590366.asp - with a precision slow-motion adapter. http://www.telescope.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=141&itemType... - and a red dot finder: http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/observed/Glptst/binos1B.jpg I also have a homemade wood parallelogram. http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/observed/Glptst/tripod1.jpg The Bogan boom arm on a swivel head is a not flexible compared to a swivel parallelogram for quickly changing between observers of a differing height in or making wide swings across the sky. But for solo observing, the fine motion adapter head was by far the best $25 I've spent when coupled with the straight bar. It allows you to smoothly track an object for about 15-20 minutes. I doubt the Orion fine motion adapter is beefy enough to handle 100mm bino. The boom arm solution seems near its limit at 20x80mm. I wouldn't expect it to work on 25x100 bino. By this point, I was into it total for $300-400. Two seasons of that exhausted the limits of the bino setup. I was debating whether to upgrade to an astronomical binocular with a 45 deg angle tilt and interchangable eyepieces (to get a range of magnification) mounted in a Scopestuff cradle. The economics of the whole thing stopped making sense relative to the price point of buying a telescope with the a binoviewer. That being said, I still use the 20x70 parallelogram binos along with a telescope. It is useful to have the binos to quickly survey at target field in a wide TFOV in direct view, before star hopping the telescope over to the target. In a group setting, it gives visitors something to do while I am retargeting the scope. - Kurt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com