Jonathan

Side by side comparison of choral recording techniques – XY vs AB

Recording a choir and organ in a church is one of the hardest things a recording engineer can do. There are loads of guides on the internet that explain how to use which type of microphone to use and where to put it, but most of these guides fail to give clear advice on recordingContinue reading “Side by side comparison of choral recording techniques – XY vs AB”

Pinched optics – the cure

If you’ve been following my geeky astronomical posts lately, you’ll see that my new telescope suffers from triangular stars, caused by pinched optics. I’ve also been posting about the problem on Astronomy Forum. Just to recap, the telescope currently produces pictures like this. The effect is subtle, but if you click on the picture toContinue reading “Pinched optics – the cure”

Milky Way

While I was mostly working with my telescope and full-spectrum camera doing “proper” astronomy earlier in the week, I also left my other camera on a regular tripod pointing at the sky, trying to photography the Milky Way with a fisheye lens. This picture covers pretty much the whole sky, almost horizon to horizon. The MilkyContinue reading “Milky Way”

Leaf

There’s been an awful lot of astronomical pictures and sciencey writings on this blog lately, so let’s take it down a notch. Here’s a picture of a leaf, taken for this week’s Photo Challenge. I pre-visualised this photo with a dry leaf. When I went looking in the garden this evening, all the dead leavesContinue reading “Leaf”

More deep space

I’m still suffering with triangular stars caused by pinched optics, but last night I decided to head out and enjoy some astronomy anyway. I’m still a relative beginner at astrophotogrpahy and there’s always something to learn even if the telescope is misbehaving. The weather was clear and very cold. Frost formed on the car andContinue reading “More deep space”

Pinched optics

I’ve been having an ongoing problem since buying my telescope a couple of months ago. Stars appear triangular, as you can see in this picture of Pleiades. I’ve done some research and it seems the most common cause of triangular stars is a defect called “pinched optics”. The primary mirror in is held in placeContinue reading “Pinched optics”

Infrared astrophotography – first “light”

It’s been quite cloudy recently so I’ve been clutching at any opportunity to make the most of clear skies. Last Tuesday it wasn’t forecast to be very clear at my dark site in Somerset but it was clear at my suburban address in Bristol. Light pollution round here is pretty bad and the sky oftenContinue reading “Infrared astrophotography – first “light””

Putting my infrared filters to the test

I now have three infrared filters and one ultraviolet-pass filter of varying specifications, for different purposes. Two of the IR filters are cheap, one of them was expensive and the UV-pass filter was found in a charity shop and I have no information about it. They all behave differently – so I wanted to test themContinue reading “Putting my infrared filters to the test”

New-old camera

A while back, my colleague Paul gave me an old camera with a couple of lenses. It was a Praktica Super TL1000 with a couple of M42-mount lenses, a Pentacon 30mm f/3.5 and a Dollond & Newcombe 200mm f/3.9. The latter is a brand I haven’t heard of before and haven’t been able to find muchContinue reading “New-old camera”

Digital infrared on Troopers Hill

I’ve shot infrared film before but this is the first time I’ve tried digital infrared. I wrote recently that I had a DSLR converted to full-spectrum, primarily for astronomy use. With the right filter, it can also be used for infrared landscape photography. I decided to use an Astronomik 807nm IR-pass filter which is actuallyContinue reading “Digital infrared on Troopers Hill”