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Spent $150 on a tracking mount for my DSLR and it burned me hard
I thought I was finally getting serious about astrophotography. My buddy kept saying you need a good mount to get sharp shots of nebulas and galaxies. So I dropped $150 on this cheap star tracker from a no-name brand on Amazon. First night out, it worked okay for about 20 minutes. Then the motor started making this grinding noise and the tracking just stopped. My long exposure shots came out all streaky and ruined. I wasted two hours in the cold for nothing. Turns out you gotta spend at least $400 to get something that actually holds steady. Has anyone else gotten burned by those budget mounts under $200? Is there a decent one that doesn't break the bank?
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simonlee4mo ago
Oh man, that's a rough way to learn a hard lesson. I agree with @jesse_smith10 that the grinding noise means the gears are just too weak for the job. Those sub-$200 trackers cut every corner they can, especially in the motor and gears. You can sometimes make them work with a really light lens, but even then it's a gamble. Honestly, if you want to stick with it, save up to at least $400 for a used iOptron or Sky-Watcher. There's no shortcut with tracking mounts, you really do get what you pay for.
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jesse_smith104mo ago
worked okay for about 20 minutes" is the part that gets me. Did you check if the motor was actually calibrated before you went out? I had a similar thing happen with a cheap tracker where the gears just stripped on me after one use. That grinding noise is a bad sign, means the motor cant handle the weight at all. What lens were you running on it? I bet if you had a lighter setup it mightve lasted longer but still not worth it.
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brian_hart4mo ago
Yeah, "worked okay for about 20 minutes" is a huge red flag. But I actually don't think calibration was the issue here. If the motor is grinding after 20 minutes, that's usually a mechanical failure, not a setup problem. The gears are just too small or made of cheap plastic. I had a similar cheap tracker where the internal grease actually froze up on a cold night, made the same exact sound. Ended up being the motor mount itself that warped from the heat of running, not even the weight of my lens. What lens were you using though? That definitely matters for how fast things go wrong.
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