[chupathingie]

Get busy with whatever nature offers. And a +1 to fluffy’s comment. I’d go with the fast lens and a burst of darkframes as the temperature changes to counter noise if there’s gonna be dim light action, myself (campfire, M80 in the camp toilet, etc). Put the lens cap on and shoot a dozen at once a few times over the course of the night, easy and useful (eats mem, of course).

[chupathingie]

Wow, that’s just too cool! Congrats! 🙂

[chupathingie]

I’ll be heading that way in August, I may put that on my list.

[chupathingie]

Yeah! Gorgeous image! I hope that’s printed and hanging on a wall somewhere. I got the same reaction from quite a few folks Friday when I linked them the thread: “OOOOH! WALLPAPERS!” 😆

Also, this is the first time I’ve ever placed! Woohoo! I almost didn’t enter…

[chupathingie]

Word to the wise: wear loose clothing and bring plenty of DEET. If you’ve never experienced the indescribable joy of the Chigger then chemical warfare is your friend. It’s been 3 weeks since I was in the Ozarks, and I’m STILL scratching dozens of bites. Not to mention the ticks seemed to be plentiful as well. It’s very pretty country out there, but there’s a reason I’ve been trying to put as much distance between myself and the Mississippi as I can! 😆

[chupathingie]

One benefit of only posting 2 entries is that when you’re getting your ass handed to you by people with far better stuff, it’s a third less disappointing/crushing.

Night time photography is hard. Astro-photography doubly so. I’m just glad we have some good participation, yours included.

Hell, I’m happy to just get a vote or two! 😆 I went back last night and browsed over the first Farkstronomy thread, and we have a LOT more folks shooting DSOs for this one. While I kind of miss the shots dealing with the tools and concept of astronomy as opposed to the objects astronomy is usually pointed at, it’s reallyt nice to see folks shooting for the more difficult tracking/stacking shots. There’s a whole lotta really purty stuff in this one, and a few new folks 🙂

[chupathingie]

That must be a popular spot for pics of the lake! LOL You two could have been side-by-side from the looks of the perspective!

We were.

LMAO!

[chupathingie]

Okay, so I went with the lowest hanging fruit, which at least for me wasn’t so low after all. That place where I took those pictures is just awesome, but quite isolated, and somewhat tricky to get at.

Those shots are beautiful. Gotta ask, is the foreground lighting natural or did you have a lantern with you?

[chupathingie]

That must be a popular spot for pics of the lake! LOL You two could have been side-by-side from the looks of the perspective!

[chupathingie]

After futzing around with control points for a couple of evenings, I’ve come
to the conclusion that I really do need a decent pano head. The duplicate
image data in the upper right is due to paralax between the fore- and back-
grounds. The only cure for it is to ensure the camera’s nodal point is oriented
properly at the axis of rotation.

[chupathingie]

The only drawback I see from the whole 3D printer scene would be durability/strength and precision of the parts. I’m sure the plastic is fine for light mechanical loads, but I’m not sure I’d want to use an adapter, say, made this way between a camera body and a heavy telephoto lens. On the plus side, there is still an unlimited number of gadgets that can be made that don’t require high strength or precision…

Is the quality of your friend’s unit higher than others? As in better precision or speed?

Edit: that last sentence came out completely wrong 😆

[chupathingie]

^useful tidbit, that is. I’ll have to see what I can do in RawTherapee to correct that.
After I get my butt in gear and do a rebuild I’ll have the gimp running in 16bpc mode
so I can have somewhat-standard tools to work with. I like rawtherapee, but it’s a strange
UI. It has it’s plusses, but it’s like moving from Maya to 3DStudio, if you know what I mean.

[chupathingie]

Dammit. I was thinking the same thing. I need to add some ND filter action to
my wishlist, obviously. I had a pair of circular polarizers stacked up in a vain
attempt to cut back on the light (didn’t work, of course). What kills me on
panos is that if anything is wrong with your setup or routine, there’s not much
that can be done to correct it later.

Still, once I clean up the stitching errors this will go to print and I’ll just have to
do better next time. 🙂

[chupathingie]

I wouldn’t shoot either one given the choice. That’s not to say I wouldn’t shoot at them if they needed convincing that I wasn’t dinner. We have some mountain lion here, but they generally are solitary and consider a large human to be more threat than prey. Coyotes, though, are more iffy. Hungry pack animals will try to take down larger than normal prey (cattle, for instance). I’ve seen some scary-big coyotes before… as large as big dogs. Attacks on humans are really, really rare but I’d much rather they keep their distance.

[chupathingie]

Shooting the moon, of course! 😉

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