Observing the Moon
Sunday evening was a cold clear night and a half-moon over Gothenburg. I got out my 1D MkIII, 100-400mm Zoom and 2x extender and took it out into the cold of my garden. Learning from my previous session, I plugged in my laptop to do remote shooting rather than shooting from the back of the camera as I have done before (see the Blog)
The zoom lens and extender are good, but I still miss my telescope. I never really had a chance to get good with it. The remote shooting made it easier to focus correctly, but the weight of the lens and camera on my travel tripod is a clear limitation, movement is very noticeable, and encouraged me to shoot faster than I would typically choose to. The double extender forced me to shoot at f11, and I experimented between 1/640th second and 1/1000 of a second. At this speed, there is no chance to capture a star, but I was able to get clearer images of the craters than previously.
I'm once again amazed at the speed the moon moves. On several occasions, I had to move the camera because the moon had tracked right out of the shot, even at 800mm zoom, which leaves a lot of space in the frame. My telescope assists with this as it has a rotational motor.