@UncleJoe wrote:
Is the equatorial mount the wedge that you are referring to? I have seen it listed as the wedge on one web site yet on others it is only listed as the equatorial mount, does $69 dollars sound right?
I like using B&H unfortunately living in New York grants me the wonderful distinction of having to pay sales tax when purchasing from them. In some situations such as this I can use the sales tax amount to pay for overnight shipping and still walk away with some savings. If you know of another vendor that is as reputable as B&H I would greatly appreciate the foresight!
Yes, that's the device. The "wedge" is the generic astronomy term. Basically it tilts the whole head over on angle to match your latitude on Earth. Basically if your camera tripod was sitting on the north pole... then the axis of rotation would already be aligned with the Earth's axis. As you move away from the north pole, your "level" tripod's azimuth rotation (if you think of your tripod like a gun-turret) no longer has an axis of rotation that is parallel to Earth's axis of rotation. But if you were to tilt it on an angle... you could make it parallel. The farther away you are from the North pole... the greater amount of til you'll need (if you were at the equator then you'd need a 90º tilt).
This is sometimes called an "equatorial wedge" or "equatorial mount" because the rotation "plane" is parallel to Earth's equator. But it's also sometimes called a "polar mount" or "polar wedge" because the "axis" is parallel to Earth's polar axis. They are all different names referring to the same general type of thing.
There are telescope mounts that are called "equatorial mounts" because the concept of the "wedge" is built-in to the mount (it's not a separate device - it's part of the mount).
As for other vendors...
B&H Photo is possibly (probably) the largest camera store on the planet and they seem to have everything you could possibly imagine for photography. For astronomy, however, they have a more limited seletion (they do carry some products ... just not as many).
The equivalent in the astronomy world is Oceanside Photo & Telescope (OPTcorp.com) ... but the downside is that they are located in Oceanside California ... so the shipping times are a lot longer unless you expedite and expediting is expensive. But in the same way that B&H has "everything" that has to do with photography ... OPT seems to have "everything" to do with astronomy.
There are number of other stores and possibly one of the closer stores to use (east coast) that I've used is Skies Unlimited. Unlike OPT, they don't necessarily carry "everything" (they handle several brand names... but not every brand name). But they DO handle both Sky Watcher brand and iOptron brand. They are located in Pennsylvania (near Philly) so you'd probably get relatively fast delivery (you are likely within the 1-day shipping radius even for "ground") and you wouldn't have to pay sales tax.
I've used them several times... they've been good to deal with an I've had no issues.
Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
In PS you have a circle on the screen that you can make any size you want. You simply wave it over the part of the photo you want to burn or dodge. Don't worry, 2 years and PS is still nearly the same GUI.
