Comet Neowise, just!

[silentrunning]

Well I've never used an SLR before for anything but one turned up yesterday. 🙂 

It was a stunning evening last night and the comet was perfectly placed for viewing from my back garden but unfortunately not accessible from the Obsy.

Having recently purchased a Samyang 135mm F2 lens that is currently bolted to the mount in the Obsy I decided to splurge on a Canon SLR so I could potentially get into 'normal' photography and make more use of the lens. Anyway after a few hours reading the manual - the camera seems to have more functions than the space shuttle - and a quick look at the settings some people have been using to capture the comet I pointed it at the comet and grabbed some 20 second frames using the standard zoom lens that came with it.

It proved hard to focus and the lens is clearly not of a quality we astrobods would hope for but it was nevertheless exciting to see the comet on the cameras screen. I also had a go at light 'painting', during a 20 second exposure I shone a torch around the back garden and that seemed to work really well as well. So all told I'm pretty pleased with this first stab at using an SLR.

This is 20s at f5.6 ISO 800.

 

[Macavity]

Nicely Done! I like pictures that show the (terrestrial) context...
You have a nice map of the stars of Ursa Major there too! 😎

[BellP]

3 hours ago, silentrunning said:

Well I've never used an SLR before for anything but one turned up yesterday. 🙂 

It was a stunning evening last night and the comet was perfectly placed for viewing from my back garden but unfortunately not accessible from the Obsy.

Having recently purchased a Samyang 135mm F2 lens that is currently bolted to the mount in the Obsy I decided to splurge on a Canon SLR so I could potentially get into 'normal' photography and make more use of the lens. Anyway after a few hours reading the manual - the camera seems to have more functions than the space shuttle - and a quick look at the settings some people have been using to capture the comet I pointed it at the comet and grabbed some 20 second frames using the standard zoom lens that came with it.

It proved hard to focus and the lens is clearly not of a quality we astrobods would hope for but it was nevertheless exciting to see the comet on the cameras screen. I also had a go at light 'painting', during a 20 second exposure I shone a torch around the back garden and that seemed to work really well as well. So all told I'm pretty pleased with this first stab at using an SLR.

This is 20s at f5.6 ISO 800.

 

Indeed a very good picture, it has so many interesting elements and I may try this myself, thanks for the inspiration, the view of the comet is very similar to mine from SE Kent.