Showing posts with label fish eye.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fish eye.. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 July 2011

Amazing place, amazing lens

I thought I'd do another little advertisment for my equipment and holiday. The lens used in this 30 second shot covers from Scorpius to Polaris! This view was from the plinth at AstroPalma looking across to the astrotrak and remote dome. I hired the f/2.8 Sigma 4.5mm 180 degree fish eye from lenses for hire, and it JUST (or maybe not?) focused with my modified Canon EOS1000D. The trouble with modifying a camera is that the removal of glass makes a tiny difference to the focus. Fortunately most lenses focus a bit beyond infinity, but with this one the tiny TINY focal length made the focus point crucial and it only just made it to focus with the ring at full turn. Phew! It is impossible to use live view at night with this lens - no star is bright enough and Jupiter wasn't risen from behind the mountain. I had to find a street light in this dark sky location. Fancy that, wanting light pollution? Mad.

Monday, 16 August 2010

Our Galaxy (even more of it!)

I carted the 8" SCT to "my" dark heath site again in search of some Perseids. Well... it's not so dark any more. How about that! As an aside I thought I would be obtaining another load of 1' pics through the fish-eye. The distortion has added every abberation under the sun but I still love the resulting image. Enjoy this super-wide picture of our Galaxy and all the constellations of the summer sky.
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