Posts Made By: Benjamin Wilkes

March 15, 2021 05:20 AM Forum: Beginning Astronomy?

Finder Scope?

Posted By Benjamin Wilkes

If you have a 200mm lens for your Nikon, it would act something like a 6x finder on that camera. A 300mm is close to a 9x finder. But the view might not be very bright after going through the pentamirror and focusing screen, it won't have crosshairs, and most important, the eyepiece will probably not be convenient to look through when it is mounted at the balance point on your scope. Plus, you are using hundreds of dollars of equipment and adding several pounds of weight to your setup.

So just buy a finder. You can get perfectly good 8x50 right-angle finders for $59-79. If your tube doesn't have a dovetail foot, make sure you get a bracket and have a way to attach it. If you live in an area of fairly dark skies (so you can see a lot of stars with the naked eye), you may prefer a red-dot pointer or Telrad. There are many discussions of these in the forums.