Woody Campbell
Workshop Member
Things are a bit slow here for a gear head, so I though that I would try to liven things up by mounting my G1 on a telescope. I ordered a 2" to four-thirds telescope adapter, and connected it to the camera with a four-thirds to micro four thirds adapter.
The G1 has several advantages in this application - primarily the 10x live view focus - focus is the most difficult issue to solve with a telescope (in astro applications there is software available that solves the problem by analyzing star images, but that doesn't work in terrestrial applications). It's also light, and relatively vibration free.
I mounted the camera on an Astro-Physics Traveler, which has an aperture of 105 mm and a focal length of 610 mm for a focal ratio of f6.0.
Here's a sample:
View attachment 16102
100%-rez crop:
View attachment 16103
In LR I increased contrast and fussed with the color balance, and applied the same minimal sharpening that I use with Leica files.
This seems promising - I've got a few small bits on order that will let me put the telescope on a robust Alt Az mount - the above are on a ball head which doesn't work that well with a telescope. I'll post more as I get it put together. With the Alt Az mount it should be fairly easy to shoot stitches, permitting larger file sizes and prints.
The G1 has several advantages in this application - primarily the 10x live view focus - focus is the most difficult issue to solve with a telescope (in astro applications there is software available that solves the problem by analyzing star images, but that doesn't work in terrestrial applications). It's also light, and relatively vibration free.
I mounted the camera on an Astro-Physics Traveler, which has an aperture of 105 mm and a focal length of 610 mm for a focal ratio of f6.0.
Here's a sample:
View attachment 16102
100%-rez crop:
View attachment 16103
In LR I increased contrast and fussed with the color balance, and applied the same minimal sharpening that I use with Leica files.
This seems promising - I've got a few small bits on order that will let me put the telescope on a robust Alt Az mount - the above are on a ball head which doesn't work that well with a telescope. I'll post more as I get it put together. With the Alt Az mount it should be fairly easy to shoot stitches, permitting larger file sizes and prints.