New iOptron Camera Mount

From their website...

The New iOptron® SkyGuiderTM
Camera MountThe newest member of iOptron's camera-mount family for astrophotography. With the same gears and motors as the ZEQ25,

Hrm,

I'm confused. Does this require the iOptron Skytracker to mount on top of this guider/tripod? Or is the SkyGuider simply a new tracker completely. So $578 for the tripod, tracker, etc, all included so one purchase does the job... just add camera? If so, that thing is intriguing.

The current iOptron seems to do a good job, at $350. But you have to buy a tripod, ballhead, etc to use it. So it quickly becomes a $500 affair too. I wonder if this SkyGuider basically covers all that, for essentially the same cost, but with a better guider/tracker.

Very best,

It's an almost barebones equatorial mount without goto or dec but with a guiding port. The main players have been making bigger, heavier mounts and that has left a gap for something that is transportable with a reasonable payload and periodic error. I use a Super Polaris for that role at the moment and to me this looks very tempting.

With the existing Skytracker, the (reasonable) assumption is that most people who would buy one, already have a tripod and head so you just remove your existing ballhead and put it on to the Skytracker.

Steve

MalVeauX wrote in post #16705014
Hrm,

I'm confused. Does this require the iOptron Skytracker to mount on top of this guider/tripod? Or is the SkyGuider simply a new tracker completely. So $578 for the tripod, tracker, etc, all included so one purchase does the job... just add camera? If so, that thing is intriguing.

Very best,

The SkyGuider is new and a separate product from the SkyTracker, and you can buy just the camera mount if you already have a tripod. I first learned about this in a promotional email from High Point Scientific