LX-200 f/6.3 "Wide Field" with Meade f/3.3 reducer

Does anyone have experience with this combo? Theoretically it yields f/2, the same as Fastar, and (I assume) you can use any camera with it.

Ryan O

I don't have any 'direct' experience with this setup, but I can tell you a few things about each part of it. I am a former brief owner of an 8" f/6.3 SCT. without a reducer/corrector, the photo is pretty poor. I burnt film with it using an f/6.3 reducer, yielding an f/4 system. On the film frame, vignetting was just as servere as with an f/10 with the reducer, but the edge correction wasn't as good. My 8" f/4 newt with coma correcter yielded a much, much better photo. Visually, the f/6.3 SCT didn't do as bad as they're claimed to do, in my opinion (although an f/10 with a 6.3 reducer is much better). an f/10 SCT without an r/c has a curvy enough field as it is; an uncorrected 6.3 SCT is a good bit worse. the f/6.3 scope at f/4 would give me a flatter field, but would rarely allow most of my eyepieces to focus with my 2" diagonal. bottom line, the 6.3 with a 6.3 reducer would do pretty darn good with the small chip of a ccd camera, but there are much better ways to image at f/4, especially if you want good eyepiece views as well. The 3.3 reducer is another beast, and I'll adress it in another post.