Lunar-Jovian-Venusian Alignment

Was out looking at the stars at the weekend, taking a look at the alignment of the three brightest objects in the night sky - Venus, Jupiter and the Moon. Couldn't resist fitting the x1.4 teleconvertor to my 100-400mm and seeing what I could see. No moons around Jupiter unfortunately, but easily visible as a planet, especially with the Live-View screen set to 10x zoom.

It's not a blog without a photo, so here's a photo of the crescent Moon..

ISO200, 560mm, f/8, 1/13s, cropped, corrected chromatic aberation

Venus. Not quite the Hubble ST, but about $1.5 billion cheaper..

Interesting red and blue light, caused by prismatic aberation of the light coming through the Earths atmosphere. Also note that Venus has no moons, so the blobby bits must either be a UFO or dust/dirt in my camera setup.

Bristol Classic Bike Show

Four images taken last weekend at Shepton Mallet and styled in Photoshop to give them the tone and feel I was looking for. Saved in a slightly different size than usual in an attempt to see if it avoids the distortion that Blogger image viewer seems to be cursing us with of late ...

ISO1600, 105mm, 1/100s, f/2.8, -1ev

ISO1600, 16mm, 1/6s, f/4, -1.6ev

ISO1600, 30mm, 1/25s, f/2.8, -2ev

ISO320, 23mm, 1/30s, f/3.2, -1.6ev

Robins in the snow

ISO1600, 400mm, 1/400s, f/5.6, noise reduction

Taken on a wander at the weekend, since all the robins around home seem to have taken to the recent trend of singing and interacting at night, even though it's not exactly a noisy metropolis.

ISO200, 350mm, 1/500s, f/5.6, +0.3ev, cropped

Another taken in a passing patch of Sun, it's near side eye was in the shade, but as it turned it's head just before leaving, I capturing the catch light in its eye and a more interesting pose.

It's nice to at finally have something to blog, after getting out for a Sunrise that turned out to be un-inspiring and setting up for a steam locomotive panoramic, only for the train not to show, has led to a bit of a gap in the photographic flow here. Especially frustrating at this time of year when there's a fantastic sunrise burning the sky, I even have my camera with me, but I'm going in the door to work. I think of all the places I could have made the most of the moment - photographers curse.

Happy Valentines Day to all!

I will post again soon...