Camera as a counterweight?

Hi everybody,
Probably I'm posting to often, but I have one more question.
I have a small GEM that I'm going to use it with my digital camera for wide-field photos. Piggybacking it on a telescope is not a solution because mount is not strong enough. So I was thinking if it is possible to fasten it to a counterweight rod instead of real counterweight? This will relieve EQ head and my backpack will be 5 pounds lighter. What do you think? Have you seen such devices?
Thank you.

Hi Denys,

Using the camera as a counterweight works quite well. I used it in that manner for several years. The main thing you need to watch for is that the camera will not hit against any tripod legs.

I would also recomend looking at a ball-joint camera mount that you can screw onto the counterweight or shaft so you can point the camera anywhere in the sky. Also, make sure that everything is screwed down tight! You do not want the camera to slip near the end of that 50 minute exposure!!!!

If you have a look at this picture, you can see where I had a camera mounted on the side of the counterweight. On the mount at the left of the picture, you can see the ball-joint mount attacted to the counterweight that I attached the camera to. It worked very well.

http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/~mclark/me1.htm

Regards,

Maurice