Portable Astrophotography Galaxy Hunter?

In preparation for Astrocamp, I experimented converting my OMC-140 Mak Cass into a deep sky machine for hunting galaxies under Bortle 3 skies. This would involve using a 2” 0.5x focal reducer with a one-shot colour camera to convert the native 2000mm fl at f14 into 1000mm at f7. It would always be slightly compromised and I expected poor star shapes and spacing issues but thought it was worth a go.

There were no distances stated or optimum positions to place the focal reducer so I had to play around with adaptors and spacers. I figured when the plate solve gave me 1000mm fl it would be in the right place. Lots of trial and error and refocusing required; initially I was getting 1400mm, then 800mm, up to 950mm before reaching around 980mm which I decided was close enough.

The individual guided frame below shows how poor the edge stars appear, but the centre was pretty good. I ran a series and integrated them without any calibration frames. In Photoshop, I gave the result a crop, smoothed the background noise, brightened and sharpened the galaxy to give a pretty pleasing result.