Astrophotography

I'm certainly not big on astrophotography, but I was amused to hear, yesterday, that Nikon came out with a new model specifically for that.  It's a slight update to the D810 (called the... wait for it... D810a) that has slightly tuned sensor detection, and allows for longer programmed shutter intervals.

While I haven't really done any astrophotography, I'm certainly interested, so this caught my attention.  Especially once I heard about the shutter part.  I don't do a lot of exposures longer than 30s, but they do happen from time to time, and they're a pain on my D4.

Anyway, I probably won't buy one ($3700), but I'd like to.

It's cool that they have it, although it seems like a very small niche, so it surprises me that they're making it.  And I'm especially surprised they didn't introduce a special lens for it, although maybe the recently-introduced 55mm f/1.4 is that lens.

No-show

I read, yesterday, about the full lunar eclipse that happened last night.  Here, it started around one AM, reached peak around four AM, and ended by about seven AM.

I debated setting an alarm to help me wake up to observe it last night, but ended up not bothering.  However, I did wake up around four, to go to the bathroom, and decided to walk outside to see how things looked.

Well, I needn't have bothered; the cloud cover was complete, so there was no chance of getting a picture at all.

I wandered back to bed, glad that I hadn't even bothered to search for the camera, proper lens, and heavy tripod.  Still disappointed, though; I've never seen a lunar eclipse.

Supposedly, there'll be another on October eighth; will hope for clearer skies, then.  And will remember to check the cloud map before going to bed.

Venusian trip

You might have heard that Venus is making a transit across the face of the sun today. We lost it pretty early, where I am, as the sun set well before the transit finished. But we lost the sun for pictures much earlier than that, even, as we had near-complete cloud cover.

This is the best shot I've got. As you can tell by the fact that this is a 100% crop from the camera's JPEG (I usually shoot in RAW, but accidentally left the camera in JPEG from some shots I took at a playground over the weekend), my 300mm lens wasn't nearly long enough for this kind of activity.

One thing that made this shot kind of interesting was that that smoke-looking stuff is the clouds. Somehow, the ND filter I was using (and that arrived just in time, yesterday) did that to the clouds. Maybe it's a polarization effect. I'm not sure; I'll have to experiment later.

Anyway, for those wondering, it was an 8-stop ND filter, ISO 450, f/8, 1/500s exposure. And to avoid the danger of blinding myself by sighting the shot, I used the camera's LIve View feature to aim. I'd like to make some comment about having a better lens (maybe a telescope?) the next time around, but I'd have to significantly outlive the oldest person ever to be around for that (by several decades). And if, by some miracle, I am, I doubt I'll be thinking too much about photography.