First scope with other eye on future photos

you would need a serious mount to hold a 12" Dob ota, tbh its not a practical solution in terms of cost, youre better off have one setup for imaging and another for observing.
Observing needs big aperture.
Imaging need a good mount.
You can have the same setup for both but then you're really looking at a BIG sct\rc on an eq mount.

If you have a large Dob, a sensitive imager and are taking images of bright objects, tracking may not be a major issue. Of course, you'll be limited to what you can image.

I think your plan of buying the dob first, getting your foot up the ladder of experience and learning the basics is a sound plan. I think you will be able to take *some* images with that setup - you can then decide if you have the astrophotography bug. If you do, God help you. If you don't, just keep on enjoying the Dob but DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT contact Dave Lillis and ask him for a view through his Dob. That will lead to terminal aperture fever.

Good plan though - stick with it and keep coming here for help/advice.

I went 8" dobsonian and then remounted on an Eq6 Pro later on.

The only difference is that you have two plastic yokes that remain part of the OTA assembly and these can obstruct just how far up and down you can move the OTA when balancing along the dove-tail bar (eventually they collide with the tube rings). In practice it has not hindered me. I'm sure they're easy enogh to remove if I had to.

Mark C.

Wow, thanks for all the responses.

Seriously great help on these forums and I'm sure I'll be using this avenue quite a lot in the future. After all is said (and not done yet) I'll just go for the biggest aperture I can afford at the moment, and then worry about imaging if I get that seemingly very expensive bug later!

Thanks to everyone again.

Right, where can I get a 3 meter scope for €600 .....

There is a range of GSO F4 Newtonians available at low cost. They're meant to be used as imaging scopes but are also visual scopes. May need a coma corrector though. You will need a mount. I do know people who mount 8 -10 inch GSO dobs onto eq mounts for imaging.

Being new to this, I don't know what gso stands for but I'm going to look it up.

Thanks John