dave_mueller

<p>Cherry Springs State Park, near Coudersport, PA. They have a star party every year. Astronomy figures heavily on their website.</p>

 

<p>If you get to Ohiopyle, there is a lookout of the river on Sugarloaf Road called Baughman Rock. It's an early morning shot to get fog in the valley.<br>

<br />Good luck on Route 30, I made that mistake once ;-)</p>

 

As others have mentioned, the limiting factor will be the Dobsonian mount, not the camera. You'll be limited to very short exposure times. Buy an old cheap film camera that supports mirror lockup, shoot a few rolls of slide film, and you'll see the problem.

 

Get Michael Covington's book, "Astrophotography for the Amateur".

We're at the bottom of the current sunspot cycle, so aurora are pretty rare these days, unless you're at the pole. The cycle should be starting to climb in the next year or two. Also, check with the local astronomy club, some of them have email or other alerts when an aurora is occuring or about to.

Q: What's the difference between a rental car and a Jeep?

A: The rental car goes anywhere! ;-)

 

I know someone (lets say a friend of mine) who took a Buick Century to Yankee Boy Basin, and all the way across Last Dollar Road in Colorado. It cost about $20 at the car wash on the way back, and the bright side was there was no damage to the car. He never thought to ask about driving on unpaved roads.

For future planning (e.g., when will the Moon pass through Delicate Arch?), I recommend Heavenly Opportunity (PC):

http://weba.viawest.net/users/fcs/ho/

Tell her to reload the driver. We use one at the office, one day the prints were almost all black, so I cleaned the entire unit, expecting something that was causing the ribbon to stick to the paper. Reloading the driver on the PC solved the problem. I can't think of anything mechanical inside the printer that would cause it to skip the cyan and magenta layers, since the printer would have to wind the ribbon all the way past them (unless it's ejecting the paper after only the first pass). If I remember, the yellow layer prints first.

1) If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?

 

2) I have a vegetarian friend who won't wear leather because it required killing the cattle. I asked her what she thought happened to all of the skins from the cows that went into fast food hamburgers. I suggested that using as much as possible of the animal was a good thing. And she decided to ignore the source of gelatin in film...

In his book "Examples The Making of 40 Photographs", Adams says "Dr. David Elmore of the High Altitude Observatory at Boulder, Colorado, put a computer to work on the problem...he determined that the exposure was made at approximately 4:05 PM on October 31, 1941."

 

I've seen a straight print from the negative, it was indeed broad daylight, nowhere near sunset as it will be tomorrow.

It's amp noise. Dark noise is random hot (all white) pixels.

With paddle sports, it's common to provide information on the boater and the rapid and/or river the shot is from.

 

Splash I: I think it would be better if you had provided more room on the left of the photo, in the direction the kayaker is looking.

 

Splash II: A little too close, you cut off his hand and the boat is merging with the frame. Minor details, otherwise a nice shot.

I found that keeping the battery in my pocket helped. The display was a little slow to come on, but worked fine after the camera was on for a few seconds. This was around 10F/-12C.

For a 4x4 tour, I can recommend Switzerland of the Americas on 7TH ave. and see if you can get Pat. He's also a photographer as well as an excellent guide. I was there in July 2002, I hope they're still around. They had a poor snowfall that season, the flowers were relatively dull. I would also recommend Governor's Basin.

<P><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photo.net%2Flearn%2Fdark_noise%2F">W3C HTML Validator</A> found a lot of HTML 4.0 errors.</P>

The Nikon D70 has that feature in one of the menus, I think it's the "Noise reduction" setting, works at any shutter speed.

Read A LOT of information before you buy anything. There are pros and cons to both scope types for general viewing as well as astrophotography. The SCTs seem to have an edge for portability as well as being designed with photography as an option. A good refractor is the most expensive, but will have the smallest aperture for the money. Most Newtonian reflectors are designed for eyepieces, you might have problems reaching prime focus with the T adapter on the camera. I had this problem with mine, I had to move the mirror to push the focal point farther away from the tube. As a beginner, you probably won't seem any difference in any of the brand name scopes (Meade, Celestron, Orion, Discovery and a few other "big" names). For a reflector, probably a 6" f/6 to f/8 would be good, but you'll need a serious mount. The SCTs come with their own mount (usually), if you can, try to get the mount for the next size up scope. Check www.astropix.com, and Covington's book Astrophotography for the Amateur. I almost had my barn door finished when I got a nice bonus at work and came across a scope with a Losmandy G-11 mount. The scope weighs 20 pounds, the mount weighs about 80 (just like normal photography, the tripod and head make more of an impact on stability than the camera or lens).

<P>The construction of the new campsites in Goblin Valley State Park should be finished. I was there last week, April 4th to 6th. They had most of them done, and were working on #3, 4 and 5. The area is a little messy from the heavy equipment.</P>

 

<P>The ranger recommends calling for reservations about 1 week in advance. In my opinion, the best site is #19, then 11, 17, 3 and 4. 19 sits by itself a little bit, so you'll have the least contact with neighbors. However, the whole site is open and against a rock wall, so if anyone has a noisy kid or dog, everyone gets to share in the misery. #11 sits in a neat alcove.</P>

 

<P>Here's a link to the official map for the campground:<BR>

http://www.stateparks.utah.gov/parks/mapping/goblin/gobl_cg.htm</P>

 

<P>The campground is about 1 mile from Goblin Valley. The comfort facilites at the Valley parking lot are under construction. The park itself is about 20 minutes from Highway 24, and it's another 20 minutes to Hanksville. Camping was $14 per night, I think most of the BLM lands were $10. I'll pay the extra $4 to get a hot shower in the morning!</P>

Cisco, UT has been mentioned. It's right off I-70, near route 128 that follows the Colorado to Moab. I drove through it last spring, but didn't stop. It wasn't the "old West" type that I was expecting.

 

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~gtusa/gt-of-month-index/01-dec.htm

 

I'll be back there in a few weeks, I plan having a better look.

Thanks for the comments. The problem is that none of the stores locally carry it, it seems like such a waste to pay $10 in shipping for a $15 product. Luckily, I think this is going to be a busy summer for me, photography wise, so I'll add it to my next order. I might try a roll just for fun.

I mixed up some XTOL using distilled water about a year ago. It's

been stored in my basement in completely full dark brown glass bottles

(IBC Root Beer if you must know). I'd like to use some now. I plan

on running a roll of Plus-X (or Tri-X) through the camera with no

particular subject. After I develop the film (assuming an image

appears at all), what should I look for that will let me know if the

developer is still OK to use? Increase in fog, reduced or expanded

contrast, etc. I think Kodak says 6 months but a lot of people have

had success up to 1 year. Thanks.

"They don't show pics in colour,resolution (eg parts diagrams) is pretty sad."

 

The PDF format isn't the greatest for scanned images. It really shines when Acrobat actually creates the document from your original. Then it can properly store fonts, compress graphics etc. Using Acrobat to store a 72 or 150dpi scanned image is pretty bad (as you've seen). However, a 600dpi full color catalog page generated directly as a PDF is beautiful, complete with index and searchable text. I'd rather see scanned copy as a TIFF.

If you want snow in the desert, invite me along. I was in Moab last March for the week around St. Patrick's day. There was a freak weather front that dumped about 8 feet of snow in Denver, and Moab was on the southern edge. It rained all week in Moab, but the day I went to Canyonlands (Island in the Sky) they got about 3 inches of snow. However, it was a nasty storm so shooting was difficult and the light was pretty bad. Snow on the ground and a clear sky would have been wonderful, especially in Arches. I hope to have better luck this year.

In theory, any rotation of 90 degree increments should not degrade the image, since you should only be remapping the pixel locations. That said, I think doing anything to a JPEG and then saving causes a cumulative degradation of the image (because of the lossy compression algorith). With any rotation other than 90 degree increments, any software package will have to use an algorithm to calculate new pixel values. Regardless of whether or not you consider this a "degradation", it will happen to any image format in any software package.

I like mine. A pro friend sold hers and bought the 18-35 Nikon zoom, which she says is almost as good but more flexible. If I had to do it again, I would probably get the zoom (or, for just the D100, the new zoom announced with the D70 today).

We're on the declining side of the 11 year sunspot cycle, but that hasn't slowed down the aurora this year! They are more common during the fall. Lens depends on what you have in the foreground, but normal to wide works best. Film - something with good reciprocity, exposures wide open should be a few minutes for 100-200 speed film. It's a lot like shooting fireworks. Consumer Kodak Elite Chrome 200 has a good reputation for casual astrophotography. I've had my cameras out at 20F, things slow down but no damage yet.