The Giant Pac-Man

March 20, 2015 by

Photographing partial solar eclipses usually isn’t that rewarding. A yellow disk covered partially with a black disk. Nothing to write home about. But today’s eclipse was different: a lone Sunspot (actually two, in region 2303) turned the Sun into a giant Pac-Man.

Partial Solar Eclipse with Sunspot 2303

Partial Solar Eclipse with Sunspot Region 2303

Not being rewarding doesn’t mean that it’s without any challenges, though. A special filter is needed to protect the lens, the sensor and – most importantly – the photographer’s eye. And the filter must be mounted in front of the lens.

The filter I have is a piece of thin metal foil mounted in an aluminum ring. It was made for my former 70-200/2.8 zoom some 7-8 years ago.

IMG_2966-c

Sun filter on the 500mm f/4

But I wanted to use my 500mm f/4 with a 2x teleconverter on a 7D Mark II today to make the Sun large on the image.

Somehow I had to mount the filter onto the much larger front ring of the 500. Cardboard and gaffer tape to the rescue! The adapter ring was completed in about 20 minutes and worked perfectly.

I lost about 4cm clear aperture this way, but that isn’t a problem when photographing the Sun. You still have plenty of light and contrast.

Another challenge was focusing. The turbulent air made it hard for the AF to catch the best focus. So I tethered the 7D Mark II to my 11″ MacBook Air and fired up Kuuvik Capture to do the focusing. And it was also a joy to watch the event unfolding on a notebook screen.

Note that I had been using a special build of Kuuvik Capture with 7D Mark II support – the currently selling one doesn’t support this camera. A privilege for being the developer of the app :)

Filed Under: Astrophotography, My Photos Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Andromeda Galaxy

February 19, 2015 by

The last couple of days presented great opportunities for astrophotography. Clear, windless nights, coupled with fine winter sky subjects – such as the M31 (and its two companions, M32 and M110).

The Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy

Taken with the Canon EOS 7D Mark II and the EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens, mounted on my Astrotrac. This image consists of 16 frames exposed at ISO 1600 for 1 minute each. Well, I was skyfog-limited at 1 minute exposures.

Filed Under: Astrophotography, My Photos Tagged With: , , ,

First Take on Orion Nebula

February 26, 2014 by

Last night the conditions were favorable to try my Canon 500mm f/4L IS lens for astrophotography. I was interested in the maximum exposure length with only a simple polar alignment (with no time-consuming drift alignment). Also wanted to check out any other issues that might arise from using such a heavy lens.

Well, it turned out that 2 minute exposures were good, so I made a series of 2 minute, 1 minute, 30 second and 15 second exposures. 35 in total – the shorter ones to be able tame the bright core of the nebula. When I loaded the images onto my computer half an hour ago, I realized that focus drifted horribly after the first three frames… I suspect the rapidly falling temperature being the cause. Temperature change induces a focus shift. That’s why you can focus lenses “beyond infinity” – to compensate for this shift.

So it turned out to be an exercise in recovering what’s possible in such a badly screwed up situation. Below is what I could recover from these three frames. I was surprised that the overall result is pretty good, just disappointed about the overly bright core.

OrionNebula-3frame

M42

Because refocusing between frames is not a viable option (think image position changes and lack of bright enough stars), I’ll look into telescope heaters… I’ll let you know when I will have a working solution.

Filed Under: Astrophotography, My Photos Tagged With: , , ,

Christmas Catch

December 24, 2013 by

I photographed a kingfisher family just a few days before Christmas. Despite the bitter cold and the flat light, it was a great day, resulting in lots of images.

Christmas Catch

Christmas Catch

Happy holidays to you and your loved ones!

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The Circle

October 27, 2013 by

I love the 5:2 aspect ratio. And I dislike the majority of the “trees from below” kind of images. But this afternoon I was unable to resist the temptation to turn my pano shooting rig upwards – the scene was simply too graphic to ignore.

The Circle

The Circle

And like all of my 5:2 images, this one really shines on a 40 cm x 1m print.

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The Tiny General

August 13, 2013 by

Earlier this month I spent a few days on photographing whiskered terns. On Lake Tisza they pretty much ignore the “tourists” and with care and patience you can stay invisible in the colony without disturbing their daily lives.

And they do lots of interesting things: feeding, fighting, you name it, they do it. My favorite time there is when the chicks are still young and brown. But don’t get fooled by the tiny plumeballs – their behavior is fully tern-ish from day one.

The chick on the image below was asking for some delicious fish or frog (I guess, because stopped yelling after getting the bottom half of a frog) during the evening feeding session.

The Tiny General

The Tiny General

Filed Under: My Photos Tagged With: ,
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