[chupathingie]

^seconded. A good visual might show you what’s at fault. I’ve seen grit stuck between the spring-loaded contacts and the hole they travel in wedge the contact in the “retracted” position before. Supposedly the error also can be caused by bent pins in the memory card slot or battery compartment, so it’s worth a look to see if that’s the case. Bent pins are usually an easy fix, just make sure the battery is out and the camera has been turned on momentarily to discharge anything that might provide potential for a short if you jigger with the pins to straighten them out.

Do you get the error code with no lens in place?

[chupathingie]

Is that cropped or reduced? The hair on that bee is wicked sharp.

[chupathingie]

I’d extend an offer of hospitality, but I think Amarillo is a bit out of your way…

[chupathingie]

yuck… at least you didn’t slide and land in it…

[chupathingie]

heh… looks very much like an alien landscape…

[chupathingie]

it’s a pain in the ass to capture the Orion Nebula WITHOUT one satellite or another crossing across the image. Even the little itty-bitty satellites show up in a good stack.

I’ll second this. The saving grace is that the trails become almost invisible if you have more than about 20 frames to stack (assuming a straight average), and at that point you can afford to toss that one frame. I used an old, crappy mount years ago and was pretty used to tossing a third to a half of my frames for tracking errors…tossing one (or more, some nights) for a trail thru Orion was pretty much an expected loss. 😆

[chupathingie]

This is very cool… what a neat effect.

[chupathingie]

Holy smokes, that’s like a 2000 foot high wall of sandstorm… did it blow over you?
Nice catch!

/especially as a pano!

[chupathingie]

Man, have I got a lot of pics to go through… I just got home today, after a full day in Arches Nat’l Park and a day in Albuquerque. Here’s the last image I took in Arches:

I actually got smart and took 10 darks after the series of lightning shots which really cleaned up my singles dramatically. Pretty crappy compression, but when I get around to uploading to flickr (that’s gonna be an all-day affair) I’ll toss a link in. I’ve got 40gig of files to go through, and I put 4000 miles on the jeep in 2 weeks. I’ve got enough pano subs to keep me busy for weeks.

Protip: if any of you folks ever go to see Arches/Canyonlands or anything in that area, take/rent a jeep. 1/2 of Arches you can’t even see unless you want to hike 20 miles or have a 4WD. And I don’t mean a Subaru Forester, either… you need ground clearance; my jeep bottomed out several times. Don’t set out on the trails without another like-equipped vehicle to lead or follow. Just wait by the trailhead for another vehicle, they’ll be more than happy to have an additional vehicle to assist if one gets stuck. The trail I hit in Arches is rated a 6 out of 10 (Tower Arch Trail) and calling it “rugged” is an understatement. I had to back up and get a running start at some of the rock ledges several times to get to the sandy roads on the other side of the ridge, where I had to be towed out. It was a great adventure, though.

[chupathingie]

I’m still lost… maybe it’s one or two of your images that hiccup the stacker and they get very warped…

[chupathingie]

Clouds. We’re gonna stay in and drink beer, get polluted and play Scorched 3D.

[chupathingie]

A lot of astrophotographers rave over the resolution they get from their macro lenses, so they are often the favored glass for wide-field shooting.

[chupathingie]

Thanks! 🙂 I’m headed back out there tonight, clouds willing, for a tighter series (this was 24mm f4, gonna do another of a smaller area at 70-100mm with the f2.8 glass…)

[chupathingie]

w00T! Fist night of clear skies all vacation! 44 minutes’ exposure. The yellow glow is Salt Lake City’s light pollution (150 miles away, no less), the smeared shadows are the landscape rotating as the camera tracks the stars and the rest of that stuff in the middle is the central bulge of the galaxy we live in.

[chupathingie]

‘Grats! Looks like a fun toy! 🙂

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