meade ext 70at

I am considering the above to use with nikon 5700. I will take wildlife as well as sky shots. Is the 70 a reasonable choice for a beginner?

I had an etx-70 and playing around with a Phillips Toucam Pro webcam, it deals with terrestrial objects fairly well. The problem with the scope is that it simply doesn't have the apeture to affectively capture enough light to make any sky shots of anything look that good. My scope had pretty good optics, except because of the short focal length, it had quite a bit of color, making planetary observations very difficult (the low magnification the etx allows doesn't help either). According to Sky & Telescope, they said that taking the scope under really dark skies will show that the scope is a great one for beginnners, and I personally have not taken it under trully great skies (so maybe that didn't allow me to see its true potential). It's fun for a while to simply cruise around with, but I woundn't recommend it for astrophotography (maybe piggybacking it onto the optical tube can give results with autostar tracking).

Like you, I am also a beginner, so everything I say may not be 100% accurate. Hope that helps.