Customer Reviews
This thing is super compact and very easy to setup and use. Great StarTracker fits in a backpack without any issue!
I've had my NOMAD tracker for about a month now. Preliminary data on a few clear nights are looking awesome. I love the portability, ease of use and the rock solid tracking even with a big 200mm lens. Thanks MSM!
La MSM Nomade soluciona algunos de los problemas que tenía la Rotator. Sin duda una gran opción para tracker de viaje, gran portabilidad y peso reducido.
Like the fact that have a foot
I have been shooting with the MoveShootMove for a few years and recommend it to my students. I received the NEW NOMAD about three weeks ago and I went out last weekend and I'm very impressed. With the extra torque I had no problem with star trailing. Nice round circles stars even with a 50mm at 2 minutes!!!
The NOMAD is my first star tracker, and I chose it because of its lightweight portability and ease of use. As someone new to star tracking it definitely ticks the boxes for these, its really simple to use.
I went for the phone kit and I have found this is too fiddly as there is no adapter to add the phone mount to the NOMAD and align to Polaris. Instead you have to screw the Phone Mount onto the plate and align to the southern star using an app like Photopills, irrespective of which hemisphere you are in. Once you have aligned you have to take the phone mount off and then mount your ball head and camera onto the plate. If you want to re-align you have to take the camera off remove it from the plate and add the phone mount back on. At the moment I am just holding the phone mount to the back of the NOMAD and aligning to Polaris, which is not ideal. Hopefully an adapter will be made available to resolve this.
In terms of the NOMAD's tracking I've managed to do a couple of successful tests and have got 2 min exposure with a 20mm lens (FF equivalent) and also 8 out of 18 20 second exposures with a 100-400mm zoom lens at 380mm, and given I am using a phone mount to align I think this is good (a polar scope is really required for better accuracy with such long focal lengths).
Overall I am very happy with the NOMAD itself as it does the job it set out to do, and for the unit alone I would give it 5 stars. However the phone kit without an adapter to align to Polaris makes aligning fiddly and overcomplicated. My rating reflects using the NOMAD with the phone kit.
As a small star tracker, the NOMAD is a big improvement over the original MSM. The two biggest issues I had with the MSM were the sloppy connections for the laser/scope to the MSM body which resulted in less accurate alignments and the screw mount to the ballhead loosening up in the middle of shooting. The first issue was the key reason I preordered the NOMAD. Withe the new design the laser and scope mount screw directly to the NOMAD without any slop in the connection. For the second issue I eventually picked up a Leofoto QS-60 to solve the issue with the MSM but the NOMAD doesn't require that workaround as a very solid mounting system is now built in. As to the other changes, I never used the MSM as a "rotator" as I have better options so losing that functionality was not missed. The switches are now further simplified, and the overall construction seems smaller but more solidly built.
Its small enough to leave in your camera bag and forget its there so you will never be without it when you need it. It really is tiny!
At first I wasn't sure about the gear mounting for the camera side ball head but now I've used it a couple of times its fantastic.
I mainly use it for wide field milky way astrophotography and so far 3 minuet exposures have been a breeze at 20mm.
I've just got in from shooting Andromeda for the first time and I have 10 out of 10 sharp 2 minuet exposures @50mm so I'm very pleased with it!
Now for the down sides.
The Laser is still useless in the cold. you really need to keep it in your pocket if the temperature is below 10 degrees.
the laser is blocked by either the camera or the lens if you try and set up polar alignment with the camera attached. you really need a lot of faith in your tripod
I have the laser alignment only but it came with the bracket for the polar scope which is great! but I cant see how I would mount it??
Wow! this looked good on the website but to actually hold it in your hand, you realise just how small and light this unit is. Being small doesnt take away from its quality at all! It is
solid and to use, is very intuitive. Really very pleased with the set up, tracking and end results. Well done guys for a great product and thank you for listening to your customers as to their suggestions/requirements.