I change optical tubes more often than I do my wardrobe. My primary interest has always been imaging and I have used a variety of instruments, each with their own strengths and limitations. I have used several types over the past decade:. I have owned the following instruments over the past decade:
Celestron: C8 and C11
Meade: SN-8 and SN-10
Takahashi: FS-60, FS-102, FS-128, Mewlon 210, Mewlon 250
Vixen: R200SS, NA140SS
My current instruments are an Orion 120ED and Pentax 75 EDHF. I am back to refractors! I like the high contrast and general freedom from collimation adjustment. The 120ED is a nice sized, well-corrected scope. I exchanged the stock focuser with a Moonlite one. My "guidescope" is a 300mm Komura lens with an Orion Star Shoot Autoguider attached to it. This provides nice, round stars with no need to fish around for a suitable guide star. So, until I purchase a scope like the Pentax 125 SDP, Tele Vue NP127is, or Takahashi TOA-130, the 120ED and Pentax 75 EDHF (a very nice smaller scope in itself) will reside in my obervatory.
My mount is an older Losmandy G11 that was reworked and fitted with Gemini. I will guide most of my shots using the STV by Santa Barbara Instrument Group. A 200mm Takumar lens acts as my "guide scope." This allows for much more flexibility in finding a guide star. Flexure is not a problem with this setup. I am set up to do piggyback photography with this setup.
My traveling mount is an Orion Sirius EQ-G. I utilize an improvised side-by-side mounting plate that can accomodate the STV and a telephoto lens. This is comprised of a Losmandy universal dovetail plate and two dovetail plate adapters.
I use a variety of 35mm lenses for imaging:
Nikon 180/2.8, 300/4 ED
Takumar 24/3.5, 28/3.5, 35/3.5, 55/1.8, 135/3.5 and 200/4
For CCD imaging. I have an Atik 16HR on a manual color filter wheel by the same company. I use MaxIm DL/CCD to focus, capture, reduce, and combine the images. I also utilize AIP4WIN on occasion.
My digital SLR is a Canon 400D (Digital Rebel XTi) camera that was modified by Hap Griffin (Option 3). When shooting with this camera, I use ImagesPlus to focus, calibrate and combine images.
Post processing of all images is done in Photoshop CS2. There I perform basic operations such as cropping, making adjustments in Curves and Levels, removing vignetting or uneven coloration, and applying Unsharp Mask. I have been using RegiStar to digitally stack multiple exposures of the same subject.