Hi this is Graham from Jenham's Astro and this is my review of the iOptron Skytracker.
so what do you get in the box?
the Skytracker is a battery driven
tracking platform and it's designed to allow you to take simple astro
photographs by attaching a camera and a lens to the unit.
It sells for about 300 pounds or a similar amount of dollars and as you can see it's about the size
of a small book and weighs about a kilo.
It doesn't come with a tripod it has a
thread on the bottom so that you can mount on a tripod. A first thing to notice
is that there's a 3/8 of an inch thread which is supposed to be a standard photo
tripod size you might want to check if you have a tripod that you have that
size of thread, my tripod had a 1/4 of an inch thread and you can buy an
adapter if you need to adjust the size so you can put it onto the smaller bolt
because my tripod wasn't very sturdy I decided to to use the tripod for my
Vixen Porta mount instead and in the way of these things that needed further
adaptation so bought another unit to adapt the thread from the Porta mount
onto the the thread on the bottom of the tracking platform. If you look online
there's lots different ways of doing that people can attach these two you can
attach them to all sorts of mounts it's not rocket science just need to make
sure you understood the size of the bolts and find a way of connecting the
two together okay so let's have a look at the controls
So the unit uses 4 AA batteries which live in a compartment behind this
panel you have an on/off switch, you have a switch to select whether you're
operating in the North or the Southern hemisphere, you have a 1 x or 1/2 x
switch for tracking speed you might use 1/2 times
if you're trying to get a shot where some foreground images remain in focus
perhaps you're taking a picture of the Milky Way behind a background of some
object on the land. The unit has a polar alignment scope here which has a red
reticule to allow you to align with pole star and iOptron have an app which
is pretty good you can download and you can then work out for a given latitude
and longitude and time of day where the alignment should be relative to the pole
turning the unit around you can see this is the ball head onto which you mount
your camera and your tripod it's attached by three screws and then there
are various screws to allow you to rotate the ball head into any
orientation so that you can point the camera where you'd like it to be
I bought this ballhead with the unit it seems quite good quality for the
price that I'm sure you could adapt other units if you wish from other
tripods.
OK so we attached the camera and the lens like this tighten it up and
this is the kind of setup that you might use outside I've got a wide angle lens
which is a good choice for wide field images but the unit works well
with a variety of lenses so all you do is you go outside you align the unit
with the pole and you do that by adjusting the the altitude there's an
altitude adjustment here you can use the unit from the equator up to 70 degrees
so you adjust that adjust it in azimuth, clamp the clamps so
that nothing moves turn on the motor it's nice and quiet so that won't disturb the
neighbours and off you go you're ready to go with tracked astro photographs
OK so is it any good?
I'd say yes the good points it tracks
accurately which must be the most important characteristic you can put 300
millimeter lens on here and easily get one minute exposure without any star
trailing. If you use a shorter focal length lens like this one you can be
quite lazy with the alignment and you can quite easily get three or four minutes
without any trailing even if you haven't spent a terribly long time aligning to
the pole so the most important thing it tracks well. Build quality generally I
take very good very solid in a nice aluminium case it's been a few comments
about finished quality generally my unit was good there's perhaps a little bit of
paint sort of scuffing here and there not perfectly nothing that I would say
that bothers me. It comes with some really good instructions so there's a little
bit of assembly to be done when you get the unit out of box putting the ball
head together all simple stuff guide you through it very well and the unit itself
just over a kilo light weight, payload three and a half kilos so you can put quite a
substantial lens and camera on it and the unit is set up to cope with that.
Bad points well there aren't really very many but I've discovered I'd say
the battery box is quite a tight space people have commented on that you can
easily catch the wires putting the batteries in and out so you want to make
sure you start with some fresh batteries and you don't try to change them
mid-session unless you can avoid it and you have to probably realign after
you've done that.
Polar alignment can be a bit fiddly this
polar scope has got about a 6 degree field of view which it means you can see
more than just a usual couple of stars that you might use to be seen
through a telescope equatorial mount polar scope that confused me a little bit
actually seemed difficult to find the pole star on a couple of occasions but you
get used to that other than that nothing significant you've got to be a little
bit careful that you've clamped down the camera if you're trying to adjust the
camera to do maybe a series of shots of the milky way you've got to take the weight
of the camera or else it will drop you've got to be quite careful to keep
everything clamped together whether it's the ball head or the azimuth mount
otherwise you can get a bit frustrated as things start to move during the
observing session so in summary it's a good bit of kit its tracks well which
says it's the most important thing super portable even with a fairly substantial
tripod like this you're still just talking a few kilos you could be outside
no trailing wires it's very simple you might have cable releases and jus
heaters of course if you've got wide-angle lenses like this those might
add a few wires but the basic set up pick it up take it outside and you're going
in a couple of minutes overall you get the impression that it was designed the
ergonomics of it by someone who understands operating during the night
in the sort of conditions that you'll be taking the shot probably the only bit of
advice I give is not to skimp on the tripod my tripod was too lightweight and
with all this kit on top it'd be quite easy for it to topple over so I say
don't skimp on the tripod make sure it's something sturdy doesn't have to be
heavy. Of course you'll only have it fall over once
before you decide to adopt another way of mounting the unit okay
I hope this review has been helpful thanks for watching bye