Mike's Tech & Photo Blog

Had a go at HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography for the first time in Devon. I shot the sunrise at Seaton Hole as a hand-held 5 exposure sequence (-2 -1 0 +1 +2 EV : "5F 1.0" in Nikon speak). Unfortunately I didn't notice at the time, but the -2 shot still had the sun overexposed which means the sun is going to be overexposed in the resulting HDR image. I guess I should have used a 7 exposure sequence or maybe have a 2 EV gap between exposures. In any case, that will hopefully teach me to check the histogram next time... As I don't have any dedicated HDR software, I merged the sequence together in PtGui Pro. This is normally intended for (HDR) panorama stitching. Fortunately it is happy stitching single view panoramas, which also allowed me to cater for the camera moving between exposures. I used the "Exposure Fusion" method (ie exposure blending) rather than Tone Mapping so that the sea would become more of a blur (as it moved a lot between exposures)...

Coincidently, I see today that Matsuiyastore , the excellent Japanese camera store, has the Nikon equivalent of my MTO mirror lens to for sale: NIKON AI REFLEX NIKKOR 1000mm f/11 Note the beefy tripod mounting socket and long focusing lever. Both great features to make this lens much more practical than the MTO. It is, of course, a much more expensive item!

The clear evening skies at the moment have provided great views of Jupiter, which is currently well placed for Northern Hemisphere observers. To get a closer look, I got out my Russian MTO 11CA, which is a 1000mm f10 mirror lens originally built for the Soviet military in the Cold War period. It is built like the proverbial tank and reasonably sharp for such modestly priced lens. I hooked it up to my Panasonic GF-1 via an M42 to micro 4/3 adapter. This gives an equivalent focal length of an enormous 2000mm! MTO 11CA 1000mm f10 Mirror Lens Pointing the combo at Jupiter showed a clear view of the four brightest moons: Jupiter's 4 brightest moons L-R: Callisto, Ganymede, Jupiter,  Io  and  Europa Unfortunately, there is no surface detail visible on Jupiter and the whole image is lacking in sharpness. This was mainly due to difficulties in keeping the lens still, as it is a light lens with a long focal length, making it susce...