11/04/07

Fuji 'Finepix 5200' Photo Gallery

Having purchased the Fuji Finepix digital camera  (http://www.dcviews.com/press/Fuji-S5200.htm) in part because of its decent low light performance (ISO 1600 capability) for a mid-range consumer camera, I am beginning to experiment with learning to use the camera.  I just discovered that it can take Raw images, which will make using dark frames much easier.  Playing around with various manual mode exposure combinations I ended up with the following shot of the moon.  This image has not been modified by post-processing, merely displayed at 300% size.

Waxing gibbous moon on 29 January 2007.  (hand-held shot at ISO 64, f/4, 1/400 sec).

I already made a simple mount to piggyback the Finepix atop Brutus in tracking mode, and I've now figured out to rig a temporary mount for my Rigel Quikfinder on the Finepix so I have greater control over its aim.  

I may get a T-ring adapter and try my hand at afocal photography through it.  While the Fuji is limited to 15 second exposures, through the 24" aperture of Brutus even this should be fairly impressive.  

On the 5th of Feb 2007-- a bitterly cold night-- I decided to try to image Mercury, below and to the right of Venus.  The first shot was taken on Automatic (f/3.2, 1/110th sec.)  Mercury can be ever so faintly seen below and at the 5 o'clock position to Venus-- above the copse of trees in the center of the image.

I then went to Aperture Priority and tried various combinations with up to +2 exposure value compensation-- with limited success.  I also zoomed in (the Fuji has a 10X optical zoom) to better frame the planets.  Venus is now slightly to the right of the copse of trees, with Mercury-- still very faint-- lower and farther to the right.  (It is nearly a half hour later and proportionately darker than in the previous image.)

I then resorted to the time honored technique of manual control and extensive exposure bracketing.  I opened the aperture wide (a whopping f/3!), and used exposures ranging from ~1/125 all the way down to 4 seconds.  While the camera LCD seemed to show the best results from the faster exposures and black screens for the slower ones, this seemed counterintuitive, so I persevered.  As one might expect, the best image of the evening was the longest one-- a 4 second shot.

I was unable to get the camera to manually focus on infinity, even though I was trying what seemed to be the right button commands, so I resorted to focusing on the treeline and keeping the shutter depressed to 'lock' the focus while I pointed the camera at the planets.  A real kludge, and I'll have to find a more graceful way to do this.  None of this manipulation could be done wearing ski gloves, and somewhat to my surprise (since I was otherwise well bundled), my exposed hand went numb and all but totally lost feeling during 15 minute of the initial photo shoot.  I tried to do as much of the second round as possible with gloves on, and hence made out better.  That's the first time I've lost sensation in my hands in years of observing, including sub-zero conditions!

19 May 2007

The moon passed 0.9 degrees away from Venus at 1100 EST.  I took a series of photos with the Finepix, both on auto exposure and bracketing widely.  Although the camera could go to 1600 ISO, I kept the speed to the default setting of ISO 200 to keep noise down.

1/20 sec zoomed 10X (~380mm)    2 sec @ ~38mm                  4 sec @ ~38mm           15 sec @ ~38mm

The 4 and 15 second shots have the highlights dramatically blown out, but they start to show an increasing number of background stars.  If I were a Photoshop type, I could probably make a pretty slick composite image that would show the woods, the Moon and Venus in their proper exposure, along with a fair number of stars.  A bit too surrealistic for me, I'm afraid. <g>