Now I get it!

Not so long ago Pentax Ricoh released the Pentax K-S1.  At first I thought the idea of a light up camera was simply folly, a gimmicky selling point.  Last night I changed my mind.

It's fair to say I am a Pentax fan.  I bought my digital KX because I knew there was a lot of excellent quality lens available both new and old available for it.  I knew the imaging was good, I'd searched flickr and done my homework.  Above all the KX felt right in my hand.  It actually felt better in my hand than the equivalent Canon and Nikon did (although I have to admit, it was a toss up between the KX and Nikon).  I love my KX so much that I bought a K1000 film SLR.  I love that so much that I have a Pentax Espio 115G, a 645 (both film and digital) and 110 Auto on my GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) list.

In an earlier post Liam alluded to the both of us taking part in a course on astronomy.  As part of the course we have to take photographs of the star constellation Orion and last night proved to be the first and best opportunity to do that.  So braving the temperature I set off up the nearest hill to bag a shot.

Orion - best seen on Flickr

I've done night photography before but it has always been pretty much in an urban area.  Last night it was dark, in fact it was so dark that my camera's auto-focus was useless and I hit on another problem.  I couldn't see through the viewfinder.  Well, no that's not strictly true.  The light of the rear display was interfering with my eyes own capability to see in the dark.  Of course, I could use live view or turn the display off.  Well, I could have if I could;

1. remember which button it was in the dark or; 
2. seen the button in the first place.

As a result I have a new mental note.  That is, 'if shooting in the dark take either a torch or phone with me'.  It helps light the back of the camera up even and I can find the buttons!  Either that or buy a camera that has light up buttons.

The K-S1 isn't such a bad idea anymore!

Feeling small in the bigger picture!

Having a look through some of the sites I trawl, photographic sites, football sites and current interest in astronomical sites (due to Lee and I currently studying a short course with the OU on the subject of Orion) i found this piece on the Hubble telescope site about a panoramic photograph taken of the Andromeda galaxy.

Reading through the article, it made me feel very small in this enormous universe we inhabit. This panoramic photograph has been stitched together from over 7000 exposures, showing over 100 million stars.

In this cropped version of the image, it would take 48000 light years to travel from left to right. So if we look at a light year as the distance light travels in one earth year we get to a total of.....

Nine trillion, four hundred and sixty billion, eight hundred million kilometers in one year. Therefore when you then times that total by 48000, we have to be looking at the biggest panorama ever produced.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/02/image/a/

A zoomable version of the photo is available from the hubble site, in various sizes and qualities.