[chupathingie]

Sadly, the ball head is a must…the clock drive mounts between the 2 heads, so the gear head allows for precise polar alignment while the ball head is used to point the camera. I could use the 3025 head I’ve got, but that thing is inconvenient, to say the least (sturdy, tho).

[chupathingie]

That made my brain hurt. On the flip side, if I ever need another job I’m gonna be a fool/money gap technician.

[chupathingie]

The Manfrottos are what I’m looking at… current contender is this guy. Would love something a little beefier, but that one seems to be as stout as B&H carries that fits my intended use.

I have a fairly rugged Manfrotto tripod that I’m hoping is rigid enough for tracking in a light breeze. It’s about 10 years old and built like a tank. Manfrotto seems to like building their gear like a Volvo (and I’m good with that).

[chupathingie]

oooooooooohhhhhh…. pretty colors! Seriously, most people think of the moon as greyscale. That’s gorgeous.

[chupathingie]

Well, this thread got me to tallying up what gear is gonna cost me to assemble a tracking rig. Looks like I’ll be blowing part of my income tax refund on a geared head, a ball head, an astrotrac and the optional polar alignment scope (is this thing really optional?). Considering the camera, lens, tracker and ball head weigh in at about 10 lbs total, that kinda drove the price of the geared head up a bit… total take wound up being about $1300…

[chupathingie]

heh..you should let us twist your arm into a night or two of sleep on the ground. I’d even let you have my air matress LOL…

[chupathingie]

That’s a good scene, there. My 50lb-pack-and-10mile-hike days are behind me. I want to park at the fire 😆 Wood is easily doable, and a couple coolers can easily keep meats and eggs fresh for a couple 3 days.

I know, it’s “car camping”, but that’s not really a bad thing. Packing some potatoes, peppers, carrots and onions in addition to some stew beef and chicken and some spices goes a long way with some tin foil and firewood. Throw in some bacon, sausage, eggs cracked and sealed in containers and some coffee and we’d have breakfast covered. Hell, I’d cover food as long as others cover intoxicants (what fun’s a fire without an attitude adjustment?) and I can do some tasty campfood. Camping near the vehicle has it’s advantages.

I’ve got a couple of 2-ppl tents, and a thermarest and an air mattress along with a few sleeping bags; plus I can scare up 1/2 dozen flashlights and I have an inverter for powering lappies to dump images to. Safety gear is limited to a 12ga shotgun (and I apologize to anyone who’s uncomfortable with firearms, but you just don’t set up camp outdoors without one). I also have a basic GPS unit I could load up with maps if needed and a couple of compasses if anyone wants to roam.

[chupathingie]

If we do, people, please don’t shoot the snakes… I know, they’re scary, but they keep the hantavirii down.

I’m all up in the get-together thing, if we can make it happen. Been fighting the futile battle to get my wife to go along, but she’s not at all into long drives and wilderness (damn shame, that). I’ll drive 12-16 hrs on a 4-day each way to spend 2 days in an interesting locale. Not at all afraid to abuse the jeep, either. 4-wheel trails lead to interesting places, might as well take advantage of them since I love scenery devoid of human influence. You have a lot of wilderness out there, and it’s not all that far out of my way coming back from Idaho… would love to have a group, preferrably of the wilderness camping mindset so a few days around the campfire could be arranged.

[chupathingie]

Dammit. Dave doesn’t know how to work that. I wrote a post, previewed, left the page before mashing go. :shootme:

You guys are leaving me jonesin’ for a summer astro trip. I say we converge on Loki’s or Yoyo’s and overrun the place with photog-geek strangers 😆

I’ve got 2 weeks reserved in July, first week is going to be in Pocatello, ID. Not quite NM skies, but planning on a couple nights at 10kft outside of town. The nearest LP source to the south is Salt Lake City, 150 miles away. Second week (or a few days at least) will be near Paonia, CO at a friends cabin at 7-8kft. It’s a long way from city lights, but it’s in the Rockies so the air tends to be a bit turbulent. I’m gonna try to image anyway, and see how it turns out. Aside from the twinkling, the skies are beautiful there for gazing. . I showed my friend the Andromeda Galaxy there for his first time, and it’s easy to spot. Also, you kind of need to be armed… the place is lousy with bear, big cats and the ocaisional rutting elk. It’s remote and incredibly beautiful.

[chupathingie]

Even just outside of Socorro is the starriest place I’ve seen this side of Afghanistan.

I stopped for the night at a campground just outside of Tucumcari back in ’82. That was my first exposure to the desert southwest’s skies. Now I’m only a couple of hours from there, and am planning on doing some sky shoots. NM has some of the most insanely dark skies you can find in the US far enough south to see most of the faint fuzzies towards the galactic core.

I’m really looking forward to it.

[chupathingie]

https://www.usps.com/send/first-class-international.htm

looks like 85cents.

[chupathingie]

Monitor – 36″ LG flat panel

/drool

[chupathingie]

wow… I need to make some plans this year.

[chupathingie]

‘Nother vote for homebuilt. You’ll lay out more initially, but the cost over the next 5-6 years is lower as likely all you’ll be doing is upgrading the video card and adding storage.

Load it up with RAM, shoot for 16gig or more. High resolution RAW files expand considerably when converted to 16bpc TIFF; a 5DII image makes for a 120meg file. If you get into anything fancy such as a 12 image HDR panorama, you’re suddenly looking at over 4gig of raw image data, and that assumes only 3 bracketed shots per frame. It’s better to go with more, slower, RAM than less, faster RAM in cases like that if money is an issue as overflowing into swap or pagefile will mean heading off to bed and hoping something gets accomplished by the time you get up in the morning. My laptop has 4gig, and I don’t even bother trying to do panos with it, as I routinely wind up overflowing into, and then eating all of, my 10gig of swap space and crashing the OS. I know, make a bigger swap partition; but it’s not worth the excruciatingly slow progress you wind up with when dealing with swap.

An SSDD on the main OS/swap partition will considerably speed things up all around, so if you can spare the scratch think about one. Main storage can still be standard HDs, but your system will be MUCH more responsive running on an SSDD.

[chupathingie]

OK, now THAT’s funny!

/runs off to FB to plagiarize Orionind‘s plagiarization…

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