comet photos, and Issues therewith

After two nights going to bed after midnight, getting up 3h later to look at clouds and returning to bed, I finally did it the third time only to see no clouds! Yes, the comet was visible - and with no practice in about ten years, it was time to take pictures with unfamiliar gear at a well-sloped location (our yard). Would I be alone? Well it seemed that way on my first attempt, but it would be visible for quite some time..

So.. 

I wandered outside with the Oly ePL8 on a seldom-used tripod, with the massive 4Thirds digital Zuiko 70-300mm. It's a fine lens made before Micro was appended to the 4:3 sensor system, so it was made to fit the throat of a DSLR-size body. The bargain adapter to make it Micro only makes it larger - and my tripod can handle it but it feels a bit stressed about it. The ePL8 has several nice features including sensor stabilization, tilting rear screen and the valuable LiveTime setting to make long exposure almost easy!

Around my neck was the Nikon D600 and Tamron's 2nd-generation 70-300mm with Vibration Correction. Similarly massive and with stabilized optics, it could use a tripod too, but the other one is buried in the garage somewhere. 

Next comet I'll definitely know where that tripod is - absolutely for sure!

Camera III, the Lumix GX7, stayed indoors with a 45-150mm lens and a Sigma 60/2.8; their turn would come soon enough. I tried for a second time to awaken my bride, she murmured politely and resumed her sleep - drat.

So out I stumbled into a last-quarter moonlit corner of our yard, ready for action. I pretended to level the tripod, turned on the camera and began to shoot. Issue #1: strong blue power-on LED atop the ePL8 is extremely non-astronomer friendly, and will be covered up for the next comet. Issue #2 is the bulky 70-300mm lens, which is just too nose-heavy for the tripod mount to be used vertically. Shots are fine horizontally though so I let it slide. Really though, given the bulk of that lens I need to devise a tripod collar that holds the lens not the camera body.

Using LiveTime on Olympus bodies is really cool, as it allows the image to build up on the LED screen as photons accumulate. After a few seconds though my shots stop doing that, revealing Issue #3. Next time, use a longer refresh time on the LiveTime update so it doesn't use all the updates so quickly. Shots looked good and I dared to zoom in quite a bit for more detailed images. That's Issue #4: wear your best glasses to check on the 3-inch screen, images may in fact not be very well focused. Issue 4a would be to ensure that focus peaking is in fact activated so you rest assured that your focus is on the stars not the foreground branches. And Issue 5 is to remember that more telephoto = more apparent star motion, so that even two seconds of shooting will lead to blurry stars and cometary nuclei, and even blurrier blurry tails.

Man I really should have practiced..

On to the Nikon, which I tried using hand-held at iso1600. Whoa, closed way to fast, revealing Issue -hm, #6 I think: set camera to manual and boost the ISO before stepping outside. I really liked that I could turn the power-on collar to light the top data screen though.  After a couple more shots I took the ePL8 off the tripod and set it in the grass (Issue x+1: have a dry landing place for a non-weather-sealed camera next time!) and leaned the D600 on the tripod for a few shots. 

The sky was quite a bit brighter now, so I decided to swap for the GX7 and give my wife another chance to see the comet. Another failure. I decided more light beat more reach and attached the 60mm f/2.8 lens, then stepped out again. I snapped the Venus/Aldebaran conjunction and felt that took too long to snap - so back to the Issue #whatever with ISO settings and shutter speeds. I then shot the comet again, without tripod assistance (since the attachment piece was still on the ePL8 - sounds like an issue) and for good documentation shot the moon/Mars near-conjunction too. Note the GX7 has a stabilized sensor; note also it was the first Lumix body to have any, so it was admittedly rudimentary compared to Olympus (and the ePL8 is a few years newer at it too).

And so it ended, for a while. I went in and had a cocoa/mocha to warm up, looked on the 3-inch screens at my efforts, and felt really good about things.

Much later in the day I used the fancy WiFi features on the ePL8 to transfer a couple images to my  smartphone, picked my fave and sent it out to the world. Very handy - but Issue XLII (check images on a screen over 5 inches before deciding what a 'good' image looks like) definitely caught me out here. In fact nearly every shot 100mm or longer looked.. not its best. Especially if a tripod wasn't used - and for the GX7 even the 60/2.8 was being a bit ambitious.

Next time, for sure!