A Photographic Diversion

I'm still recovering from my hospital visit a week ago and I'm still feeling lousy but I am feeling just barely well enough to also be a bit bored.  

This morning, I decided to pull out a small telescope, a few eyepieces and a camera to shoot a few photos through our living room window.  I needed something different to do that wouldn't wear me down completely.  I would have preferred to look at something in the sky but we very rarely see anything but clouds in the sky here between November and March so I'm stuck viewing terrestial objects rather than astronomical objects. 

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First, an update on my health...  On the positive side, I am feeling slightly better with each passing day since starting on the steroid therapy so that is good.  I am still feeling lousy though.  I'm still seesawing toward anaphylaxis with breathing difficulties occasionally and then recovering an hour or so later.  This seesawing makes my health feel quite unstable.  I'm not all that steady either...  some dizziness...  weakness...  and I just "don't feel right".  The lows are not as low as they were previously and they are not as frequent so I do consider that as a positive.  

The downside is I am still confined to the house and taking it very easy.  I can't risk dangerous anaphylaxis again and especially not due to being impatient in my recovery so I really have no desire to wander outside the house yet.  We were planning to go to one of Lukey's hockey games tomorrow but I am still not feeling up to doing that so I am probably going to lay low at home.  We'll see what tomorrow brings though before we make a firm decision about a hockey game. 

We have plans for next weekend too and we are still thinking those plans may need to be cancelled as well.  Next weekend's plans will be more demanding, exhausting and even risky so it isn't looking good for those plans.  Time will tell but it isn't looking good at the moment.  When I look at how much I have recovered in the past week and extrapolate that to how much I can expect to recover next week based upon previous experience with this sort of lousy health...  it isn't looking good for wandering from the house for another couple of weeks.

I'm now feeling well enough, however, that a bit of boredom is becoming prevalent.  I've been doing a lot of sleeping.  When I'm awake, I'm reading and/or watching movies.  Well, I'm watching parts of movies before falling asleep again!  I sleep for a few hours, then I am awake for a few hours.  My schedule is completely out of whack because I'm also finding myself awake  for a few hours through the night too.  

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So, for a little change of pace this morning, I pulled out my smallest telescope, a camera, and a few eyepieces.  I set up the telescope in front of our living room window so I could view through the closed window...  the dirty closed window...  and take a peek at what is outside.  The views were kind of cool with the snow falling and everything covered in fresh snow so I removed the eyepiece and inserted a camera so I could shoot a few photos.  

I did something a little different with this photo.  I actually shot three photos with different focal points.  The focuser on this little telescope is nice and very fluid so snapping from one focal point to another is pretty easy.  For it being a bit dark, gray and a bit gloomy out there and considering I shot through dirty glass, I like the sharpness of this multi-layer image.  This little telescope has some nice optics!

I just noticed that there is a little bit of vignetting in these photos.  Hmmm...  in hindsight, I think that is because I used a 1.25" nosepiece on the camera rather than a 2" nosepiece.  This camera, my Sony a6000, has a rather large APS-C sized sensor but I still should be able to shoot with this camera through this particular telescope without getting vignetting.  

I guess I'll swap that 1.25" nosepiece for a 2" nosepiece and test that theory before I put everything away.  I am sure that the vignetting will disappear.  

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I changed the nosepiece on my Sony a6000 to a 2" nosepiece and the vignetting was gone.  I didn't shoot any photos to add here but the vignetting was clearly gone.  

I must not be thinking clearly because that is a no-brainer.  The fact that I grabbed a small 1.25" nosepiece to use with this camera is a clear sign that I am not thinking clearly.  The 1.25" nosepiece should only be used for smaller camera sensors found in my astrophotography cameras.  

Then I decided to push the limits of this small telescope to check my Sony a7 camera with its full frame sensor.  Obviously, I'm using the 2" nosepiece with this significantly larger sensor...

As can be seen in this photo, the Sony a7 full frame sensor vignettes a tiny bit with the larger 2" nosepiece.  I sort of expected this but I wonder if that tiny bit of vignetting might be due to a tiny bit of sag in my optical train.  I didn't use screw-on extensions for this photo.  I used compression fittings.  The compression fittings are more prone to sag due to the heavier weight of the camera.  The threaded screw-on fittings won't sag.  

Regardless, I'm not concerned about this tiny amount of vignetting because it could easily be cropped out or likely corrected in post-processing, if necessary.  Actually, the fact that I am able to use a large full frame sensor on this rather inexpensive but sharp little telescope is impressive.