As you most likely know if you follow my blog that I love astrophotography and I also love shooting the moon.
I've recently had a telescope given to myself, but I've never been happy with the pictures I've got from it, until now.
Over the past week or so, I've been itching to get out in the garden with the scope, but weather had put a stop to that. After checking the weather last night I went in the garden to be greeted with a sky full of cloud.
I sat there watching the clouds go by, lining the telescope up to the moon, as you can still see plenty of detail even through the clouds as long as they aren't too thick.
Then, the sky cleared..........
(Excuse the poor shot above, as this was done handheld on the phone).
I'd been wanting to get some sharper shots of the moon, but all previous attempts haven't been as good as I'd have liked, even with the Sony A7iii connected directly to the scope, the images just don't seem to be sharp, I really think I need a new camera adaptor, I was told to just use the scope and the camera, but cannot get focus without a barlow lens being connected first.
I decided to leave the lens connected and try to get shots with the phone instead, thankfully the Samsung S21 that I'm using shoots in Raw and has a full manual mode, which worked wonders on this occasion.
(Above images are directly from the phone, other than JPG conversion).
It took a bit of working out and a bit of perseverance finding the sweet spot, you just need to be off centre slightly for the images to turn out above.
Then I nailed a shot....
I have to say, I am more impressed now than I was when I first got the scope, it is a high learning curve, thankfully some of my own photography knowledge comes in helpful when it means getting the shot I want.
I have now ordered a mobile phone holder for the scope, so will be doing so much more experimenting with this, I do think however I need some new optics for the scope as the ones I have seem to be quite old now, the scope was given to me after all, eventually I will be getting a dedicated camera, but for now, I love these few shots.
Tonight there's a chance I could see the Northern Lights, so off out in the garden I go in about 20 mins, with the camera ofcourse, if I do get anything worth showing, I'll be posting on here.
But for now I just want to thank you for reading my blog and I really hope you've enjoyed the shots.
All the best :-)
