Love it! I've got my own cheap telescope and I want to get into astrophotography, could you give me a great budget startupkit and would you know anything about building a barn door tracking mount?- is it worth the savings? Looking forward to seeing more!
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Very nice! First of all you need to decide what you really want to photograph. Let's suppose you want to photograph the milky way (like the photo above).
You can do this with a simple camera and an astrotracker (like the barn door tracking mount you're talking about). This type of astrophotography is quite simple in contrary to deep sky astrophotography because you use very short focal length and then you don't really need very accurate mounts. For example some astrotracker are: the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer, the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Mini or the iOptron SkyGuider Pro. They cost about 350-550€ and can return very nice results! If you buy one of these, a mid-level camera (like a Canon 700D), a nice fixed lens like a Samyang or Rokinon 85 f1.4 and you can take incredible pictures, trust me! Yes, the total price its high (let's say 400+450+300€=1150€) and you have to learn how to post process and the basics but this is everything you need to take beautiful wide field astrophotos. I never tried a diy barn door tracking mount so I can't talk about it. If its cost is not so high you can try to build it one. With low focal lengths it probably works good! To summarize: the sky moves so, substantially, the longer the focal length the higher the accuracy you need. And with a fast lens (f2, f1.4, f2.8) you win.
If you want to go further (focal length > 300mm) you need more accurate equipment. You need a more solid and motorized mount like an HEQ5 (mine) or EQ5, EQ6. These are mid-entry level mounts very nice for astrophotography because they are relatively cheap (800€-1200€ I know, astrophotography is not cheap!) and can support up to 10-15 kg. Obviously you can use it for wide field (I shot the photo above in this way) but they are thinked to carry telescopes. For example you can think to buy an HEQ5 now and use it with your camera (if you have one). When your skills has grown you can think about buying a telescope. With longer focal length you can take galaxies (they are veeery small so you need very long focal length (1500mm)) and mid-nebulae (the entire Snake Nebula for example). In this case the use of a CCD or CMOS dedicated camera is highly recommended (>1500€).
I hope I was clear. Sorry for some English mistake but I wrote it all in a hurry! And sorry for the Euro-Dollars conversion! :D
Thank you so much for your advice and recommendations! You've explained so much valuable tips and thanks for including the different options for gear, it really does help and even have something to eventually aim for while I build upon the skills! :) I'm only in the UK so i know Euros estimate quite well! :) Looking forward to seeing more of your work! :D thanks again!