First Light with New Kit

[hitmanh]

Well, had my first go at setting up the az-e6 and ED80 combo last night. Not without issues (optical polar alignment on this thing involves dislocating several major vertebrae) and sadly clouds rolled in just as it was getting nicely dark, but managed a few moonshots before giving up for the night.

Pretty pleased with this for a first time with new gear. Shot with GH3.

Cheers

Matt

[wimvb]

I'm sure you will have a great time with this setup once it getsdark and clear. Probably at the next full moon. 

[Alien 13]

Nice first image with the new kit, if you are finding looking through a polar scope a pain get yourself a DSLR right angled viewfinder and just hold it in place when setting up.

Alan

[Knighty2112]

Nice shot of the moon. Well done!  

[Bonnylad]

Lovely photo, and something I'd like to get into. Could you briefly outline if that's any sort of tracked composite shot, or a single frame? And settings for the camera/lens you used? I'm trying to build up a picture (npi) of what's required/involved.

Cheers.

[hitmanh]

1 hour ago, Bonnylad said:

Lovely photo, and something I'd like to get into. Could you briefly outline if that's any sort of tracked composite shot, or a single frame? And settings for the camera/lens you used? I'm trying to build up a picture (npi) of what's required/involved.

Cheers.

Thanks for your comments. This is a single shot, with no tracking involved. ISO1600 and 1/500 shutter (the moon is bright, so no need for long exposures, multiple exposures to bracket exposure could be useful though). Telescope is Skywatcher ED80 DS-Pro and camera is a Panasonic GH3 (4/3 sensor). The moon wasn't my target for the evening, just something to do while waiting for stars to come out to play. Sadly clouds appeared before I could do anything DSO related.

Mount was Az-eq6-gt, however any decent tripod or stand will do, no tracking or goto involved for this shot.

[Bonnylad]

Great stuff. Many thanks. Appreciated.

[hitmanh]

Always happy to help.

[Astroframer]

I like it really nice picture, is it a heavy crop ?.

[hitmanh]

14 hours ago, Astroframer said:

I like it really nice picture, is it a heavy crop ?.

Thanks. It's not a heavy crop, probably around 50%, the shot has to the moon on the left side of the frame, so the crop is mainly to get rid of the black space to the right and a slight trim of black space around the moon (to get the square form factor, which is something I really like after shooting medium format for a few years).

[hitmanh]

As a comparison here is the moon shot on the GH3 with 300mm camera lens (also cropped in the same way).

 

[Astroframer]

Its a really nice picture, very nice detail, I also like the square format again same as you from shooting medium format digital, shot all my degree in square format.