Its narrow field of view would limit DSO's like large nebula's.

The C11 would be great for planets and galaxies due to its focal length. What you may find out pretty soon is no one scope can do it all. Allot of people use this and Orion has great customer service. Most people would suggest spending a large portion of your budget on the mount.Р”Р„lso look at the Orion Atlas. I can only imagine how expensive this is likely to get and hope to build up my gear slowly. I plan to use my 5 D2 for photography and have a laptop for dedicated use. Do research before you purchase stuff, ask around then make an informed decision. But if you get a $650 scope to start off with, you'll have a good amount to get started off pretty well. Then you have to get in to cameras, attaching the camera, scope attachment plates, possibly auto-guiding the mount (the CGEM is great for this), filters, a laptop. I would suggest a Canon DSLR camera, they are the most popular in Astro Photography.XS, T1i, T2i, T3i. F/10 is pretty slow, the 80mm reflector is f/7.5 and the 8in newtonian reflector is f/4 (very fast). The f/# tells you how fast the scope is for collecting light. Reflectors get light into the camera quicker.

It's not a big deal once you get used to doing it, only takes a min or 2. Reflectors have to be collimated for every use. Shorter focal length makes alignment a little less important, it also means light gets into your camera quicker. I also use a focal reducer that takes the 600mm down to 510mm when ever I want.

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