Its not all bad

[iancandler]

AM might have bitten the dust but on a brighter note I sold my old dslr the other week and last week got my new Samsung GX 10.

There's a lot of difference with the GX 10/K10D (it and the pentax are pretty much identical and both made by pentax)

Its a much more semi pro orrentated camera, so gone are all the auto scenes and its in with a programable user setting so you can store all your preffered settings for astro use and just rotate the top dial to user to set them all instantly.

The 10.2 mp sensor will be a bonus as well, meaning I can crop in closer without loosing definition.

The raw mode on it uses adobe's DNG format and produces cracking pics without the need for much adjustment later, and it even processes the raw images in the camera if you wish!!

The ability to take SD-HC cards up to 4gb will be handy as well, so no more fiddling around trying to change cards on a cold night.

The icing on the cake is the OPS shake reduction system that lets you use even manual lenses, you just input the focal length and it does the rest, even when its tripod mounted, so hopefully shake and vibration will be a thing of the past even when connected to the scope.

The only downside is its heavier than my old dslr so I will have to keep an eye on my focuser to makes sure there is no creep and adjust accordingly.

So far its proving to be a damn good camera.

Also at the weekend I picked up an old sigma 400mm F5.6 prime lense, mainly for wildlife photography but it will also get pressed into service for lunar shots.