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That’s a bit of an unsatisfying run-around. Was there a picture hanging somewhere of a parrot pining for the fjords?

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They’ve got a variety of tips pages, BTW… I keep their homepage on the toolbar.

I think most every photography type aspires to the level of nat geo…

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Eden, I really like your thunderstorm & frozen flower globes. You don’t have a closeup of one of the globes, do you?

That one really grabbed my attention, but there are so many outstanding shots up in this contest.

Y’all have outdone yourselves this time around.

/applause

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man, this is really stretching my willpower…. that 70-200L would go nicely with my 5dII…

Sadly, I am also in need of tires…and a windshield.

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I suppose I’ll toss in a few comments on telescope types.

Newts: Overall best bang for the buck. Simple construction, easy to collimate BUT suffers from coma (smears stars into a comet-like tail towards the edge of the image) especially at faster focal lengths. Add a focal reducer/coma corrector though and it gets very sharp.

Cassegrains: These are the typical Celestron telescopes. Folded optics, usually f10 or more. Won’t need any collimation unless it’s manhandled. Makes for a short tube that is relatively easy to transport. If it’s 10″ or more, you can add a Hyperstar unit in place of the secondary mirror and mount a DSLR to it. This effectively turns the scope into a Schmidt camera, at around f2. Wicked fast.

Refractors: Don’t even go here unless you have either a healthy budget or an affinity for chromatic aberration. Achromats are cheap, and the image quality reflects it. There are a number of good quality triplets and quad APOs out there, though; Borg and Takahashi come to mind. Some of these are even available with 4″ focusers for medium-format use. Typically refractors don’t come any faster than f6, but focal reducers are available for them as well.

Resolution is almost strictly a factor of main lens diameter (or mirror diameter). Well-made refractors excell at resolution and contrast based on size due to having no central obstruction (which adds diffraction and robs contrast), however when cost is figured in you can easily best a 4″ refractor with a 10″ newt and still pay less (but have a bulkier rig).

There is a difference in results depending on whether you are shooting diffuse or pinpoint light sources. Larger aperture=smaller stars (better resolution) and dimmer stars captured due to the added light gathering ability. Nebulae on the other hand are affected much more by f-ratio, and you can get some stunning results with a fast 4″ scope.

One odd design is a maksutov (either mak-newt or mak-cassegrain). All the mirrors are spherical, and a corrector plate that is easily figured make the optics cheap and relatively coma-free (much easier and faster to grind spherical elements than parabolic ones).

There are many more types out there (some of these home-build folks really have some arcane designs) but most folks are going to wind up with one of the first 3 above.

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That’s been my familial scene, too. As much as I hate to give a “Little Thought” gift like a bit of plastic stamped with a monetary value, it’s appropriate when locales don’t allow for cruising to the folks’ house for the evening on a whim and in general seeing the family often…

…and we’ve always been “cheap”, in a way. The big thing for us was having an excuse to stage opening a can of smiles on everyone.

My wife is working, both last night and Christmas day. She decided she wanted to set a bunch of cookies out for the customers (store-bought, but still I thought she was making a nice gesture). Safety regs make a dish full of food that the public’s hands are in out of the question (and rightly so), so we actually sat around for part of the evening with our frequently washed hands wrapping sugar cookies in cellophane. It was s small thing, but it made me smile this Christmas.

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That was pretty much the long and the short of it.

(groan)

😆 That was my first reaction as well!

You guys made out like bandits!

This is my 3rd year of Christmas away from family, but I got to talk to everyone on the phone for a good long time at least.

I got a bunch of gift certs, one for B&H Photo… I’m thinking a set of polarizers…

Loads of fun toys, y’all. Orionid, I bought that same lens earlier this year (except the Canon variant). It’s a fun piece of glass. It was labelled EF-S, but it fits EF mounts too. I hacked the shroud off to take advantage of the FOV on a full-frame… 180 degrees! 360×180 panos in 3 shots. If someone’s standing beside you, they’re likely in frame. Stopped down and focused for about 5 feet, it’s got a practically infinite depth of field. It’s a neat toy.

Merry Christmas, all! 🙂

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Good for you! I still need a spare battery…

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First thing I noticed about a full frame was how wide it felt. I went from a 300d to a 5Dii, and the kit lens at 24mm practically felt like a fish-eye.

It also forced me to build a new PC… stitching 120meg TIFFs together is a system crusher.

The nicest thing to me was all that extra room to crop while still having enough pixels to keep details.

It will make you a clean-freak, even the smallest bit of yuckus on the glass shows up in the image.

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wow… my intarwebs take a dump for a few days and I miss all the fun.

/always happy to see spammers disappear

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You do realize that you will only end up with aperture fever doing this, don’t you? 😉

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/me claps, pops open beer

^what he said.

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hmmmm… neat idea…. haven’t tested out the hi ISO on my cam on anything yet. Willing to bet that 25600 is pretty noisy, tho… but I do have an f1.2 lens that would work nicely with that…

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Wait. Did you just call us all museum pieces? Confused

Nope, just what you all do. I’d love to see a Gallery of Farktography; y’all are an unknown wellspring of talent. One or more of you folks are going to be famous someday, so look around and make sure you say hello to each other.

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Oooohhhh… this friend of yours and I could have a great time on a hike. Lots of good stuff there, and the geek of knowing what he’s shooting is a major plus. I love doing bugs, but I don’t have nearly that collection! I’ll throw in a wolf spider just for grins (I tossed this one in on one of the few contests I’ve had time to participate in)…

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