Both my laser and scope are so loose in their mounts that this has been a pita for me. And as soon as I think i get the scope centered, I use the laser pointer without the scope mount and its a good 6in off at 50ft. /sigh. And both the cell phone holder scope mount and the regular scope mount don’t point in the same place… about to throw them out and order a set of “calibrated” ones… but now I have trust issues lol
Thanks for doing this tutorial. I went ahead and calibrated my laser. It was off just a little. I adjusted one adjustment screw by a quarter turn and then adjusted the other adjustment screw also by a quarter and little by little I got the beam in the crosshairs. I think the fact that the laser beam in the Nomad has to travel through that thin tunnel for 1.5" helps with accuracy. My take is as long as the laser beam cleanly exits the end of the Nomad and is not diffused you are going to be pretty accurate at least at 50mm or less. Before calibration I have shot at 30 seconds with my Samyang 135 and I don't have star trails. I'm looking forward to seeing how well I can do with just the calibrated laser with the 135mm lens. And if your laser battery runs out you can still eyeball Polaris by removing the laser and looking through the hole / tunnel.
Excess play when threading the laser onto the tracker...I find that there is still too much play when turning the laser to project the beam onto the paper bag. To remedy this I put a couple of wraps of teflon tape around the threads. This provide just enough tension and tightness to keep the pointer from moving too much. When done, the tape easily comes off of the threads. I tried this and it worked great. Thanks for the informative video.
This did not work at all on my MSM Nomad. Even a small 1/4 turn and the threads where so loose it moved over 8-10" at 20 feet just grabbing the laser and moving it up and down. Entirely too much play in threads to perform this.
Hola, quizás sea una pregunta tonta. He alineado el nomad con el laser y me ha dado buenos tiempos de exposición. Pero al intentar afinar la alineación con el visor polar, veo que el laser y el centro de la retícula no coinciden. En otros vídeos he visto que en el antiguo msn la polar no se coloca en el centro de la retícula . En el Nomad donde coloco la polar exactamente. Gracias y buen trabajo
Thank you for the video. It helped, although In my case, everything had to be adjusted. I must say adjusting the polar scope was by far the most difficult. Everything was wobbling and the adjustments were so minimal I had barely noticed them. I hope I'll never had to go through this again...
Hi, I enjoyed your video, however I wanted to mention that when using the polar alignment scope, the celestial pole is what is centered in the crosshair not Polaris itself as the star is offset slightly from true celestial pole. Using various apps will assist with aligning Polaris to the correct position for your location and time.
Hello Alex, new subscriber here. Thanks for the video. I'm considering the nomad but a little concerned these 71 year old eyes won't be able to see through the polar scope or even get a rough alignment with the laser. Have you had any experience with the phone mount tool? Thanks again
@@chasingluminance Depends on how bright the star is. I can make out polaris just barely. I've seen alignment phone apps that look pretty easy to use and see (sky safari 7+) but wonder how well it might work with the nomad. Thanks again
@roryhaymanphotography8882 they work well and the phone adaptor for the nomad is pretty sweet. I do think the laser will generally be more accurate But I shall test
I bought the laser for my Sky Guider Pro and use it to polar align first. After it's polar aligned, and my camera is attached to the ball head, I'll then lay the laser between the rails on the cameras hot shoe and use it to help aim at what I'm trying to photograph. Dual purpose.
So for the older MSM I had watched your video on how to calibrate. It was so difficult to rotate the laser evenly because it is wobbly in the holder. I went to the hardware store and purchased a brass bushing and then drilled it out slightly to fit the laser. With the bushing in the holder I rotated the laser and it did not wobble. I was able to get a better adjustment. If you have an email address I can send you a photo the bushing set up.
Hi Alex. Asking a stupid question. When calibrating the laser, what part are you spinning? the red screw with the pointer solidly seated within it? or the pointer as you are threading it into the red screw (with the red screw tightly in the rotator already)? Whichever way you spin, at some point you reach the point where it is fully screwed in. This is what is different with calibrating this pointer as opposed to the one with the old one.
My situation is that the pointer just shifts a bit along just the y-axis in the final rotation before it is fully screwed into the rotator, and frankly I am afraid of making things worse rather than better.
Thanks. I think I am going to leave it alone because it truly does not move a lot. What is bizarre is that when you look into it (batteries off) it looks out of center (as it did in your helpful video)@@chasingluminance
Great video! Thanks for sharing. Have you tried to phone mount for polar alignment? I live in a country where the lasers are forbidden, so I cannot use it, but I was wondering if the "first approach" polar alignment with the phone mount also needs calibration. Just wondering... Thanks for your videos, very useful! Looking forward to the new one!!
