Good manual (non-computerized) telescope recommendations...+?

Well, ..., you're price range is to low. There are no non-computerized scopes on the market these days that can do astrophotography. Whoever told you that was completely wrong. The Canon Rebel DSLR (T3i) ill make a great astrophotography camera. You may want to consider removing the IR filter and replacing it with clear glass filter. There are instructions for doing this on them web.

A meade 10"-SCT with autoguider and equatorial wedge makes a decent astrophotography setup. The Celestron C11 Equatorial mount is also good.

However, I do have a few suggestions that I'd like for you to consider.

1) Astrophotography is one of the most difficult aspects of photography to master. So prepared for a steep learning curve. You'll need to put a lot of patience, planning, and thought into what you do.

2) For $700 you could get a large aperture dobsonian mount is a virtually impossible to use for astrophotography. Use it for visual astronomy until you save up enough money to buy a decent tracking mount. Although, some people have been successful at it. You really need a good tracking mount. Now you may be able to salvage some of your investment by buying a good tacking mount with OTA bands. You just slip the Dobsonian OTA into the bands of the tracking mount and you're ready to go. The mount will need to be one that can be tilted (angled) to meet the latitude of your photograph location and will need to polar aligned. This will limit you to the kinds of mounts you can use but if you plan to use the Dobsonian OTA then it will most certainly have to be a high end German Equatorial GOTO mount. Be prepared to spend ~$3000 for a decent goto mount. For astrophotography you do not want to scrimp on the mount. In your case the mount, IMHO, is more important than the Aperture. Oscillation damping and periodic error correction are factors you also want to consider in buying a decent mount.

3) You might want to pickup one of the following books (both by the same author): "Astrophotography for Web Cams" or "Astrophotography for DSLR's" - Robert Reeves.

4) You will need to decide what kind of astrophotography that you'd like to do with your DSLR: Piggy Back Camera, Eye piece projection into a camera, or Prime Focus into a camera or dedicated astronomy camera (Plus assorted filters and filter wheels). Of course you can do all of them but you'll need extra hardware for each.

5) You need a way of auto-guiding the scope. Even though, you buy a great mount, are polar aligned, and do your drift alignment you still need to keep the scope on target while you collect all of those photons from millions of light years away. So the scope will need a way of fixing itself on a nearby star and remain absolutely fixed on that star while your photograph is under exposure. There are a variety of ways to autoguide your scope and you just need to decide which way will work best for you. Again, the two books I mentioned above are great resources for all for the concepts I've mentioned in this e-mail.

6) Decide on how you will acquire your photos (e.g. 1 long exposure session vs may short exposure sessions with stacking during processing).

7) Decide on how you will process the photos.

Finally, It's best to connect with your local astronomy club. Many of these clubs have amateurs who have been doing astophography for a long time and have developed a high degree of expertise in the field. Getting up with folks that have already been involved with it for some time will help you get over some of the early pit falls and mistakes, help you decide on what type of equipment to buy, as well as, ramp the learning curve for yourself. For instance my club has an entire sub-group dedicated to astrophotography: http://www.raleighastro.org/index.php?option=com_e...

PS www.cloudynights.com isa great place to look for used but excellent equipment.

Computerized Telescope

Re:Additional Details

You really did not say what you want to shoot, astrophotography is a broad field.

It looks like you don't understand the hobby enough to ask the question which makes joining an astronomy club a better idea.

"Astrophotography" costs range from $45 for a tripod to put your camera on (to just shoot all sky photos with the camera's lens), up to $5000+ for a telescope/mount/guidescope/CCD camera capable of "prime focus" photography.

Tripod shots can be unique ----> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2012-03-11_...

If you go into "prime focus" photography you are repeating images somebody else has already done better, just look at Astronomy Picture Of The Day ---> http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060109.html