Better CCD Camera, Mallincam Hyper Color OR Orion

Im interested in getting into deep sky astrophotography from my boca raton fla residence..with a Nexstar 11. ive done visual work on many of the Messier objects the last 6 months but looking to take the plunge for AP...

Looking for something that will give really good images, yet is fairly easy to use. Would an Orion starshoot Pro, or a Mallincam Hyper Plus be preferred? Im interested in astrophotography, as well as seeing the live images taken on the laptop immediately after an exposure. I dont have a wedge, would prefer to do 30-60 sec exposures and just stack them for the time being and have fun playing with that. Ill get a f 6.3 or 3.3 focal reducer if need be...or even the hyperstar f1.9 if that'll help, even though the 3.3/6.3 would cost much less..

Any suggestions?
Thanks!

ttt

mike selz said:

Im interested in getting into deep sky astrophotography from my boca raton fla residence..with a Nexstar 11. ive done visual work on many of the Messier objects the last 6 months but looking to take the plunge for AP...

Looking for something that will give really good images, yet is fairly easy to use. Would an Orion starshoot Pro, or a Mallincam Hyper Plus be preferred? Im interested in astrophotography, as well as seeing the live images taken on the laptop immediately after an exposure. I dont have a wedge, would prefer to do 30-60 sec exposures and just stack them for the time being and have fun playing with that. Ill get a f 6.3 or 3.3 focal reducer if need be...or even the hyperstar f1.9 if that'll help, even though the 3.3/6.3 would cost much less..

Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Without a wedge you won't be doing long exposures...but...you need to decide which way to go. While you can grab Mallincam frames with a video capture card and produce still images, its forte is live video (which you can also record to DVD for later viewing). It will go very deep, but will not produce finished still images of as high a quality as a standard CCD cam. It WILL be much easier to use and to get immediate results out of than the Orion, and is, in general, better suited for an alt-az setup.