Some pictures with my new toy ! :-)

Hi,

This was my first session with my recently acquired
Nikon D70 -- I finally made the jump to digital
photography, with a Digital SLR that can be attached
to the telescope as easily as any SLR film camera.

I think it was pretty impressive (no, I'm not bragging
or anything -- the kudos right now are for the camera!
:-)). Besides being able to set it to ISO 1600, the
fact that you can instantly check the results and
repeat as needed does improve the quality of the
results.

Anyway, here are some pictures -- sorry that the
comments are in Spanish; if you are really intrigued,
I can translate them (but trust me, there is nothing
particularly interesting in those comments :-))

http://www.mochima.com/personal/2004-04-24

(yeah ok, I'm weak -- I couldn't resist taking some
images of those geese during their migrating flights;
there were so many that afternoon!)

Any feedback, comments, criticism will be highly
appreciated.

Cheers,

Carlos
--

Carlos:

For a first attempt I think those all look decent, congratulations.

It looks like the camera offers good control over exposure, as with your
Jupiter over/under exposures.

What is the max resolution that is available on that camera? Were you using
it for these images?

By the way, your Spanish is pretty good;-) I understood all of it!!

Clear skies,

Francis Marion

Francis Marion wrote:

Carlos:

For a first attempt I think those all look decent, congratulations.

Actually, it was not my first attempt at astrophotography -- it
was the first one with a digital camera. I had taken a few other
pictures using a film SLR camera, so I don't classify as an absolute
beginner -- but of course, I'm still far (very far) from being able
to claim that I'm an "expert" in astrophotography.

Some of the successful (and semi-successful) pictures are at:

http://www.mochima.com/personal

(those are all taken with my film camera -- a Nikon F80; most of
them using the telescope as the objective, except for the ones of
the Milky Way)


It looks like the camera offers good control over exposure, as with your
Jupiter over/under exposures.

Yes, the camera can be set anywhere between fully automatic (to
the point that it decides to pop-up the flash automatically if it
needs to) to fully manual. I used full manual for these.

The only difficulty with it is that the small LCD display doesn't
give you a lot of detail (for instance, I only could see Jupiter's
moons with the 1-sec exposure -- several other pictures did show
them, but I wasn't seeing them on the LCD display). Still, it is
much better than having to guess, as it is the case when shooting
on film.

What is the max resolution that is available on that camera? Were you using
it for these images?

It has a nice 3000 x 2000 resolution (6 megapixels). Yes, I was at
maximum resolution; with "High quality" JPEG compression, normal
images are about 2.5 Mbytes; but these, since 99.9% of the image
is just black, the files are usually below 200k or 300k

By the way, your Spanish is pretty good;-) I understood all of it!!

;-)

Well, it's good news that after 12 years living in Canada, the
area of my brain in charge of mother language is still operating
properly :-)

Cheers,

Carlos
--

For a first attempt I think those all look decent, congratulations.

Actually, it was not my first attempt at astrophotography -- it
was the first one with a digital camera.

That's what I meant, with that new camera.

I had taken a few other
pictures using a film SLR camera, so I don't classify as an absolute
beginner -- but of course, I'm still far (very far) from being able
to claim that I'm an "expert" in astrophotography.

Some of the successful (and semi-successful) pictures are at:

http://www.mochima.com/personal

Several excellent images.


What is the max resolution that is available on that camera? Were you
using
it for these images?

It has a nice 3000 x 2000 resolution (6 megapixels). Yes, I was at
maximum resolution; with "High quality" JPEG compression, normal
images are about 2.5 Mbytes; but these, since 99.9% of the image
is just black, the files are usually below 200k or 300k

6 megapixels? I'm way behind the learning curve when it comes to the latest
and the greatest!! My 3 year old Sony FD-97 is just over 1 megapixel!! ;-)
Technology sure does get old fast around here!!


By the way, your Spanish is pretty good;-) I understood all of it!!

;-)

Well, it's good news that after 12 years living in Canada, the
area of my brain in charge of mother language is still operating
properly :-)

Looks like your from Spain? My family immigrated from Northern Spain to New
Mexico about 1697. We've stayed in the same general area since then.

Good luck with your new toy,

Francis Marion