Aligning a camera to a dovetail L bracket adapter accurately?

[realflow100]

in a few days i'm getting a new camera lens for my camera
55-250mm IS II lens

And also getting a dovetail to 1/4 L bracket adapter to attach my camera directly to my telescope star tracker

How do I make the camera aligned perfectly to the vertical axis of rotation so its straight 90 degrees

The platform which the camera rests on when mounted is just flat rubberized and does NOT have any way of keeping the camera aligned with any kind of pins or guides

if I dont get the camera straight on the adapter when tightening the 1/4 knob it wont be able to aim straight up properly.
so i'm not sure what to do

is eyeballing it good enough? or is there a way I could use a ruler or something to make sure it's on straight?

[realflow100]

note i'm not using it with a telescope. just by itself with the goto star tracker.
if I dont get it lined up right. my goto's will be super inaccurate and impossible to reach stuff above a certain height due to the camera not being straight on the bracket.
how do i get the camera to be really straight?

[JayTee]

I have always just eyeballed it. That has always been good enough to give great images.

Cheers,
JT

[realflow100]

Are you sure that will be good enough?
if its off too far i wont be able to aim straight up. and the tracker will not have accurate goto or alignment.

[JayTee]

Here is the system that I use when I attach my camera + lens directly to a mount.

I attach my small 70mm scope to the mount to do the inial goto alignment because I don't want to use my camera for the very reason you have stated.

Then I swap the camera out for the telescope being careful not to jar or move the axes.

Below are the results I get from this setup.





Cheers,
JT

[realflow100]

Mine is just this ioptron alt-az smartstar E8500 goto mount

and using that dovetail L bracket adapter to attach my camera directly to the mount without a telescope. once I get my new 55-250mm lens
And that way I wont have any weight issues or the camera pulling on the mount so I will have much higher accuracy
I will be limited to 30 second exposures mostly. but thats still long enough I can get a lot of photos and stack them to get less noise and more details

[JayTee]

It's important to read the captions above the first 3 images. I start out with my small scope attached, then after the goto alignment, I remove and replace it with my camera + lens. Doing it this way makes it much easier to goto align the mount.

JT

[realflow100]

its EXTREMELY EASY to bump the mount left or right slightly so its not centered straight anymore theres a lot of left-right play/backlash. I'm not sure that would work unless i was able to completely lock it down by taping the horizontal rotation thing or something!

[realflow100]

I just got my new lens! Yay! Now waiting for the bracket adapter to arrive on sunday or saturday.