Excellent tips. Mine had pinched optics straight out of the box -- namely, bright stars with a dark notch on one side. So I loosened the locking ring retaining the objective lens and tightened it up again only a slight amount. This immediately fixed the problem and resulted in perfect circular star images.

Thank you very much. I have the same guidescope, and I am gonna follow all your tips, an start printing the shade. :)

Great video as usual. I love your contribution to the community.

Some great tips, I have this SVBony and certainly like the idea of the hood and the blackened sides 👍

Thanks, Ben! As usual, so practical und useful, mate.

very handy mate, i have that guide scope for my dslr , i painted the lens like you showed , worked great , i have a couple of 3d printers so i already had a dew shield , they come in very handy for astrophotography as i have printed many dew shields , vixen dovetails and hot shoe brackets for guide scopes and a variety of rings and brackets for mounting red dot finders etc, saved myself a heap of money ,

lol i got the ASI120MM-S, and putted it always into the SV Bony. Now i watched this video, i am using the threads! Thanks man!

Thx, I have one of these , I knew a couple of things but will take on board the others..

This video was worth watching just to see the spanner wrench that I now need to buy. :)

So I bought one of these after seeing this video, wanting to give the little guy a shot. I just disassembled it to paint the sides of the coupled element, and pleasantly, it seems my model featured some effort to darken the sides of the lenses. It looked like it was a weak coat of marker, so I still darkened it considerably, but I’d like to think somewhere, somebody, saw this video and said, “well shit.”

Good advice thx. Get well!

Great video, thank you!

A very useful and informative video. Ok, it's spending money but I used a M42 to C mount adapter for a more stable mounting for my old QHY 5-II camera on the SV-165. It also means you don't have to wind the focus so far. And the focus is then set for"life". A bit old school but, if you don't have access to a 3D printer, trim a black foam mouse mat down to act as a dewshield.

Great video! You really contribute to the amateur astronomy community. Thanks for making me buy another tool…

Great tips Ben I've got one of these recently but the stars look awful in mine no matter how long I take to focus it they look more like comets than stars but it seems to work ok. I did loosen the lens a little thinking it might be pinched optics causing the issue but it's not made any difference. Another extra I added was a Low Profile Female M42 / T Thread to Male C Thread Adapter from First Light Optics. So I can screw on a smaller guide camera like a Lodestar or what I have on mine a QHY5LII mono guide camera so it keeps everything tight & secure.

Good tips, thanks

A 3d printed Bahtinov mask cover would be fun for this too.

Received mine free from Svbony for doing a review of the SV503 ED 80F/7 Refractor.. Haven't had the chance to try mine yet because of bad weather.

Another issue I have noticed , but not with this scope but another similar min i scope is the metal dew shield being black, but very shiny and not flat black. If you shine a flashlight on it, you gonna see how much light it bounces back. For a quick test, I taped it inside with a black-cloth based tape around inside. I had an indirect light coming from the side (neighbor floodlight) and any time I was imaging and even from a 90 degree angle, I could see how the light was effecting the images. With the tape, the problem was gone. This can also be a half or full moon, even if it's not in the FOV of the telescope. I don't recommend tape though, it comes off or gets in the view, but try to get like a flat-black spray paint and lightly coat it in the inside to take away the shine. Disassembled, with no lens in it, and not too much, just enough to take away the reflectivity , of course.

I'm also not a particularly sweaty handed guy, except when I'm holding my lens elements, blackening them.

My guiding is a train wreck. I blame the Eq-35 for that. I’ll try this but I’m ordering the William Optics 50mm to replace it and put this on my DLSR setup in the skywatcher 2i.

Nice! I have one of those svbony mini scopes for guiding. The marker painting step to stop scattering light was something new to me. I am not sure if I am that cold blooded to open that thing and remove the lens but eventually will do so. Now, for the F/R markings on the glass, if you already wrote F on one side or say just a dot (i.e., so you will remember that a dot means front side), why marking the other side?

It would have been nice to see a before/after. We now have to take your word for it. I own this scope and it's pretty bad from scratch (image quality). Not an issue for guiding but then it make me think: why should we try to improve something bad but already good enough ? Not useful imho.

Great video, thank you! Thank you for providing the stl file to the dew shield. It looks quite long. Does it obstruct the field of view of the camera?

Cool video. Don’t clean with windex it will take your coating off. That’s a perm sharpie.

Hola, gracias por el video. ¿Es posible usar el mini svbony añadiendo un ocular plossl para visual? ¿Haría foco? Thanks!

Ben, is there an issue with the dew strap on top of the 3D printed dew shade? Wondering if the heater could get too hot. Is there a particular material that should be used?

I have the Sky Watcher AZ-GTi mount in EQ mode. Can it track with a 400mm lens on a crop sensor without auto-guiding? I've had success at 300mm.

Does anyone know where you can purchase a dew cover something like in this video.

Useful video. Random question, my guidescope turned up so I practiced focusing with my ZWO asi224 in the day time no problem. Tried it with my DSLR out of curiostiy, could not focus no matter what! Is it not possible?

Using the threaded objective to focus moves the image around so much that I have to recenter it to focus all the time. Very annoying. Know if greasing the threads will help to remove the play?

What your opinion of svbony camera for guiding vs the ASI220MM?

With the revolution of the asiair, I'm certain there are a huge number of ZWO guidescope/cameras in use. Only after this purchase, did I become aware of the Svbony clone at half the price. Do you think these mods can be done on this scope as well?

The blue stopper for the camera? Enlighten me please? Cant find anything like it, or a 3D printer file.

How is the quality of the image you get? Are the stars round? I once tried a 30mm ZWO mini guide scope and couldn't even recognize stars on the image. They were all of weird shapes.

Great Tips!! Thanks. One question: I went to the site for the .stl file. I went to a site that has no files that were obviously available. How do I get the file?

Some ways, I don't get why we still have cords when blue-tooth would eliminate them.

Hope you're doing well. Did you find a source to have the pre-printed Dew shields madeavailable?

Hi. Do you happen to know if this shade also fits the ZWO 30F4 mini?

I'm missing something, why put the camera on the finder scope and not the telescope. I'm new at all this. Thanks

Please help me, y have the same guidescope and an ASI ZWO 178 MC, very similar to your configuration, but I cant manage to see a damn thing in PHD2, I only see noise and PHD2 is unable to find a star, ever happen to you?

do they sell the lens individually?

👌👍👍🙏 👋🙋

I don't have a 3D printer, could you sell a dew shield to me? Thanks. Great video BTW.

Can anyone make one of these for me?

Don't understand what you are saying? Too complicated. This is all new to me.