For sale - Canon flashguns - pristine condition

I have four barely used Canon flashes for sale. They are 420EX, 430EX, 2 x 580EX2. I am inviting sensible offers for them. If you wish to make a bid, please use the comment form below and leave contact information. What you see is what you get and these flashes all work perfectly. Selling to people in the Columbia South Carolina area. Terms of business, personal meeting in a public place and cash. Prices negotiable. Buy 1, buy 2, buy 3 or buy all 4.

Werewolves Beware

There's a full moon up there and I photographed it with a simple Canon XT (8 megapixels) and a 70-300 lens. Getting the exposure right was another thing entirely. That took multiple attempts until I hit on the right exposure as the camera's meter wanted to make the whole scene a mid grey which meant that the moon became a white disk with no details.

Sadly my 300mm lens and 8 megapixel sensor isn't going to produce an image any bigger than this. I do wonder how much better this would be if I used a film camera and one of the 1,000mm mirror lenses that abounded in film days. In our conversion to digital we have lost so much variety in lenses. We have concentrated solely on the shorter lengths with the maximum commonly available being 400mm. That, of course is far too short for a lot of the fun stuff.

We have also lost our handy-dandy exposure tables. Had I been doing this in the days of film I would have had access to an exposure table that would have told me that the lunar surface had an EV of f11 and 1ISO. It would have then told me adjustments that should be made for various phases of the moon. There were whole guidebooks of exposure values for various scenes. They're almost impossible to find now though. Thus, it's back to experimentation.

The lunar image above is 595 x 482 pixels. That, off a sensor of 3456 x 2304 pixels. That's 1/27th of the image area. A longer lens would have increased the moon's size on the image area. Certainly we could use a sensor with more pixels but that's not really the point. The point is that a 300mm lens is too short for good moon photos. 400mm is not really any better.

What we need ideally is a telescope and a T2 adaptor to put our camera onto the telescope. Sadly, few of us have telescopes and fewer the ability to set the telescope to track the moon. The moon really travels quite fast and it gets faster the longer the telescope you use to view it. The lunar motion is very different from stellar motion so most astronomical tracking mounts won't work.

This is a fun project for somebody out in the wilderness with loads of time, some tools and the enthusiasm to put lots of effort into taking really good lunar photos.

Happy Christmas to all my readers.

It's that time of year again. It seems to come every year. We have people buying expensive gifts and spending more money than they normally ever would on things that people don't really need. 

The spirit of the holiday has been all but lost in today's world. Originally, the 21st was the winter solstice - when the day was the shortest. This was celebrated as the turning point of the year from when days would become longer. Later, this was hijacked by the Christians and Christmas Day was celebrated as the birth of Christ, despite the fact it was in February. This was done in order to attract the Pagans from Paganism into Christianity.

I'm not a great celebrator of Christmas. I like a little that reminds me of Christmas but don't like to go overboard. I like a Christmas tree and Christmas cards. Christmas food is good too - at Christmas. This Christmas I didn't feel like putting up my 2 foot tall tree and decorations so I bought a 6 inch high LED tree that runs off a USB power supply. For me, Christmas is about the people I know. It's also about peace and quiet.

The photo above is my little $4 LED Christmas Tree that I have on my desk. It changes color so I put my camera on a tripod and took ten photos of it as it changed color. Focus was set on the first image and locked for all the rest. It reminds me of Christmas and is up from now until 12th night. I celebrate Christmas from December 25th until January 6th. For me, it's more a continuation of family tradition that anything else. I think back to the Christmases I had when I was very small. I remember those happy times. 

I Looked first at miniature trees in November and saw this one (below) but it had gone when I bought mine, which was a shame as I prefer it.

So, to all my readers, a happy Christmas. May you receive everything you wished for others last year. May all my readers have a happy, peaceful Christmas with a safe, profitable and healthy New Year. May everybody survive Christmas and bounce back rejuvenated for the forthcoming year. May those that I don't get along with or haven't got along with whomsoever they may be, go forth in peace and tranquility.