I setup my 8" Celstron Nexstar with f/6.3 focal reducer and Lumix GH1 to try out some "terrestrial" photography. I picked a public road in Redwood City, CA that has a good view and easy parking nearby. As far as I know this is a public sidewalk here.
Here is a shot with the GH1's stock lens at 14mm. The red squares indicate areas that I will image with the telescope.
Here's the stock lens zoomed all the way out to 140mm. This area is centered on the left red box in the first image.
This image was taken through the telescope and f/6.3 redcuer, so it is effectively 1260mm f/6.3.
This image was taken through the telescope at prime focus 2000mm f/10. Note that with the GH1 crop factor, the field of view here is comparable to 4000mm in standard 35mm SLR terms. Most of the blurriness is coming from air currents and haze. I will try again on a cool, overcast day, and I would expect better resolution. I am also eagerly awaiting my telescope remote-focus project to be completed. It's extremely difficult to achieve perfect focus while touching the telescope's focus knob, so it's possible this photo was taken slightly out of focus.
The distance is about 2.4 miles.
Here is a cluster of antenna across the Bay.
22 miles.
Here's another post of photos that I took many years ago with the same telescope and a Nikon 35mm film camera.
http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2009/09/telescope-magnification.htmlI forgot that I even had an eyepiece projection adapter. I'll try it out next time, but I suspect the limiting factor will be air clarity not the telescope optics.
Composite shot of Jupiter with its moons.
Here is a shot with the GH1's stock lens at 14mm. The red squares indicate areas that I will image with the telescope.
Here's the stock lens zoomed all the way out to 140mm. This area is centered on the left red box in the first image.
This image was taken through the telescope and f/6.3 redcuer, so it is effectively 1260mm f/6.3.
This image was taken through the telescope at prime focus 2000mm f/10. Note that with the GH1 crop factor, the field of view here is comparable to 4000mm in standard 35mm SLR terms. Most of the blurriness is coming from air currents and haze. I will try again on a cool, overcast day, and I would expect better resolution. I am also eagerly awaiting my telescope remote-focus project to be completed. It's extremely difficult to achieve perfect focus while touching the telescope's focus knob, so it's possible this photo was taken slightly out of focus.
Here is a cluster of antenna across the Bay.
22 miles.
50mm Nikon lens. This is essentially the field of view that normal human vision has.
135mm Vivitar lens.
2032mm Celestron Nextar 8" SCT telescope. Prime focus. The ceramic insulator is just visible in the lower right corner.
The same telescope using eyepiece projection -- I forget the focal length of the eyepiece. The white halo in the center of the image is an artifact of my shoddily-mounted eyepiece setup.
A shorter focal length eyepiece increases the magnification even more. This is probably a 6mm eyepiece, giving 2032/6 = 338x magnification. The photo is blurry, but this is mainly due to tiny vibrations in the 'scope and camera. When viewing this directly through the eyepiece, the image is pretty sharp since human eyes and brains have better image processing than cameras.
