Message posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on October 23, 2001 at 12:09:09 PST:
Thank you Steve. Such praise from the mouth of an expert makes it worth hauling all that gear up to Tikaboo ;-) I used a fully manual Pentax KX camera with mirror lockup. This is useful to avoid vibrations from the moving mirror at extremely high magnifications. Connected to that was a Takumar 2x photo teleconverter for Pentax K-mount. Then a Pentax T-ring, which in the 2500mm Panorama is screwed onto the T-adaptor, which screws onto the C-5 scope. No eyepiece projection. In the 5000mm panorama I added Garys 2x T-barlow, which screws between the T-adapter and T-ring. Instead you could probably use a second 2x photo converter of good quality. I am going to do some experiments with that soon. The scope was mounted on a heavy Tiffen tripod with a geared Bogen 3275 head. To help with the extremely critical focussing I used a clip-on viewfinder magnifier. When I took the TLC crew up earlier this year we tried to hook up their camera to my C-5 scope. They had some kind of adapter that made it connect to my Canon AF T-mount. Unfortunately the adapter needed the electrical signals from an AF lens and refused to work with the T-mount.
As you can see 4x is really pushing the lens. I did some higher magnification shots, but then it gets blurry and you get too far down with the f-stop. Even the 4x shots I had to shrink a bit to make them look sharper.
Also, we were very lucky to have an exceptionally clear day. The photos were taken very early in the morning, right after the sun came up at the base.
What setup are you planning to use? I cant wait to see your material. Good hunting!
In Reply to: Re: New Area 51 panorama - excellent! posted by Steve Hauser on October 23, 2001 at 10:42:54 PST:
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