 phoenix |  January 30th, 2010 Today is the first full moon of 2010. That large beautiful moon up on sky is calling out to me to try out my Canon 7D DSLR on it. So despite the -15°C (with wind chill -20°C) weather, I geared up and went to my backyard for a bit of backyard astronomy. Okay so it is not the ideal place to do any astrophotographing since I live right in the city. The large amount of light pollution from city lights and the air distortion in the city are all enemies of astronomy. But in such cold weather, I really don’t want to drive up north just for a few photo of the moon. Not to mention, just as the title suggests, I don’t actually own a telescope. I was merely trying to see how much my Canon EOS 7D can capture when combined with my long lenses. I have a Sigma 100-300 F4 and a Sigma 1.4x teleconverter. The Sigma 100-300 F4 @ 300mm coupled with the Sigma 1.4x teleconverter gives me a focal length of 420mm. On the 1.6x Canon EOS 7D it gives me an effective 672mm focal length.
I started with my daily tripod / head combo, the Gitzo GT1541 Mountaineer carbon fiber tripod and Markins Q-Ball Q3 Emille. Now that’s one big mistake. The little 4 section light Gitzo tripod is obviously not stable enough to photograph something that’s some 380,000 kilometers away, which is how far the moon is away from the earth. And the Markins Q-Ball even though stable enough to shoot earthly things but definitely slips a bit when having the big lens aimed upwards. So even with mirror locked up, and remote release cable, the image is still very blurry. Here’s the result, click on the image to see in full resolution.
Canon 7D, Sigma 100-300 F4 @ 300mm, Sigam 1.4x teleconverter, manual exposure @ ISO 100, F8, 1/100 sec, manual focus using live view.
Continue reading ‘No telescope, no problem! Canon 7D doing astronomy’ »
phoenix | November 12th, 2009 Metro Toronto Zoo opened the 10 acre Tundra Trek show casing a lot of arctic animals. So what “white” arctic animals are there? Well, there’s Polar Bear, Arctic Wolf, Arctic Fox, Snow Goose, and Snowy Owl. However only three of them are on display when I visited.
This is the third and last post in the “white” animal series. And the star of this post is the Arctic Wolf. I’ve had posted my photos of the Arctic Wolfs at the Toronto Zoo before in this post. But the new exhibit is much bigger and the wolfs looked much happier in there.
Looks like a big white dog, but this is actually the Arctic Wolf.
Continue reading ‘“White” animal in the zoo – Arctic Wolf’ »
phoenix | November 12th, 2009 Metro Toronto Zoo opened the 10 acre Tundra Trek show casing a lot of arctic animals. So what “white” arctic animals are there? Well, there’s Polar Bear, Arctic Wolf, Arctic Fox, Snow Goose, and Snowy Owl. However only three of them are on display when I visited.
This is the second post in the “white” animal series. And in this post, Snowy Own is the featured animal.
Here’s a shot of the pair of Snowy Owls on display.
Continue reading ‘“White” animal in the zoo – Snowy Owl’ »
phoenix | November 12th, 2009 Metro Toronto Zoo opened the 10 acre Tundra Trek show casing a lot of arctic animals. So what “white” arctic animals are there? Well, there’s Polar Bear, Arctic Wolf, Arctic Fox, Snow Goose, and Snowy Owl. However only three of them are on display when I visited.
So this first post of the series and the featured “white” animal is Polar Bear. Toronto Zoo now has three polar bear. All of them were little cub that spent some time in the Toronto Zoo before. I have photo of them when they are just few months old. There are two female Aurora and Nikita. This pair of twin sisters were just little cubs then they first came to Toronto Zoo in 2001. You can see my photos of them in this posted titled ‘Polar bear cubs at the Toronto Zoo’. There’s also a male named Inukshuk who also came to Toronto as an orphan bear in 2003. You can see my photo of Inukshuk when he is just a little cub in this post titled ‘New polar bear cub in the zoo‘.
Out of water, Refreshing…
Continue reading ‘“White” animal in the zoo – Polar Bear’ »
phoenix | October 31st, 2009 Took a few quick snap shot after the morning rain. The wind’s howling strong and cannot get a good macro shot of anything without some motion blur. These two are the best of the bunch. All taken with Canon EOS 7D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro lens.
The last rose. This is the last rose of the season. Seeing it standing there by itself in the wind and the rain. Just simply cannot resist to snap a picture.
Droplets. Water droplets left by the rain created an interesting effect when look up close.
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