Camera recommendations needed....

[smartcooky]

In fact, very few general purpose digital cameras seem to have a "bulb" mode.

TBH, most general purpose non-SLR film cameras didn't have it either. You really had to have an SLR to get the "B" mode.

I think all the Canon EOS range of DSLRs have "B" mode. So do most Nikons (my D300s certainly does).

[smartcooky]

In 1986 I got interested in astronomical photography thanks to Halley's Comet, and after a bit of experience always got what I wanted on film.

I missed this in your earlier post.

I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time when Comet Halley was about in 1986. My stars aligned, literally, to deliver me an opportunity of a lifetime.

Not only was I a member of the local astronomical society, I was also in the RNZAF and posted to Christchurch when the Gerard P. Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) came to town for an extended stay. A couple of days after they arrived, they had a minor instrumentation problem; one of their ADI's was having a problem with blowing bezel lamps, and they had replaced them and run out of stock. It just so happened that I was in the Instrument Maintenance Section at RNZAF Wigram when the call came for assistance. It happened that the ADI in the C-141 Starlifter was a similar model to the type that I worked on, installed in our P3K Orions, and the bezel lamps were the exact same part no.

To cut that part of the story short, we fixed their ADI (an internal wiring issue) and I was subsequently invited to go as an observer on one of the flights, where, among other scientific investigations, they were to observe Comet Halley. This is where I met Jim Nicholson, a freelance photographer for National Geographic, and a member of the "Can Do Project" run by the Medical USC at Charleston. They arranged to have an SLR camera (a Nikon F3HP) attached to the 91cm Cassegrain telescope to attempt some photography. Nikon themselves were worried that even their F3 might not work well in such conditions - 70°C, but it worked flawlessly.

These were some of the results.

These three photographs were taken from the KAO and flying at 41,000 feet over the Southern Pacific Ocean, on three different nights. The camera, a Nikon F3HP, was attached to the head-ring of the KAO telescope. The film used was Kodak EES800/1600 transparency film, but processed in C-41 negative film chemistry by Astrolab in Hornby, Christchurch. These reduced resolution versions still look great, but they don't really do justice to the originals.


Comet Halley in the Milky Way
1986 April 6 - my flight - a 5 min exposure with 58mm Nikkor Lens at f1.2. Comet Halley is dead centre,
with Eta Carina, the red nebula down and to the right


Comet Halley
1986 April 8, 6 min exposure with 105mm Nikkor lens at f2.5. Eta Carina is on the left edge of the photo.
The comet's ion tail is clearly visible as a blue streak to the right and slightly upwards


Comet Halley
April 10, 1986, 6 min exposure, 105mm Nikkor lens at f2.5. Again the ion tail is clearly in evidence.


All photos credit: all photographs taken by James H. Nicholson, CAN DO Project Principal Investigator - Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston.

 

[Donnie B.]

Wow, those are truly amazing! 

[Kiwi]

Good post, Smartcooky.

The best series of photos I saw of Halley's Comet in 1986 were taken by Dr John Wattie, an Auckland amateur astronomer, and he apparently camped out 30km east of Auckland to avoid the city lights, so must have been near Coromandel.

These three photographs were taken from the KAO and flying at 41,000 feet over the Southern Pacific Ocean, on three different nights. The camera, a Nikon F3HP, was attached to the head-ring of the KAO telescope. The film used was Kodak EES800/1600 transparency film, but processed in C-41 negative film chemistry by Astrolab in Hornby, Christchurch. These reduced resolution versions still look great, but they don't really do justice to the originals.

I've often wondered this about flying observatories:  How was compensating for the aircraft's motion done, if at all?  The second shot has some circular star motion, but that can't be due to earth's rotation as the stars are too far from the south celestial pole.

Contrast is fantastic -- 41,000 feet above the ocean with no city lights would help, but I guess the tranny film in C-41 would also.

I have an article from The Dominion on 27 September 1985, titled Comet telescopes 'waste of money'.  It was terrible how some camera stores were conning the naïve public into buying scopes to see a naked-eye comet.  Almost any telescope was too big and all they needed at most was a pair of binoculars, so I was responsible for the article.  Some camera store people didn't like me doing that, but others cheered.

The Dominion,  Friday 27 September 1985
Comet telescopes 'waste of money'
   Buying a telescope to watch Halley's Comet next year is a waste of money, Wellington camera shop proprietor Doug Bennett says.
   At its most visible the comet would fill so much of the night sky that it would not be observable through a telescope with a narrow field of view, he said yesterday.
   "People are buying telescopes without doing their homework on what it's going to look like," he said.   The head of the comet was expected to be about a third of the size of the full moon and the tail would cover about 20 degrees — or one-ninth — of the sky.
   "If so, the comet will more than fill a viewing screen with a 135 millimetre lens which has an 18 degree angle of view," Mr  Bennett said.  "It will also cover just under half the screen with a 50 millimetre lens."
   An ordinary pair of binoculars or a zoom lens off a camera would be sufficient to magnify the comet, he said.
   Scientific officer at Wellington's Carter Observatory, Mr Graham Blow, said even the observatory telescopes would probably not offer people a better view than a pair of binoculars.
   But for those wanting a close up look at parts of the comet the observatory will be open an  extra night a week from February to May next year.

Sunday, 9th of March 1986, about 3am.  My birthday.  After photographing a wedding on Saturday then doing some celebrating very late, there was light fog near sea level so I drove up Wellington's Mount Victoria to see the comet for the first time.

While walking toward the top where there was a small crowd, I heard a slow southern-States drawl which said:  "Do y'all mean Ah travelled ten thousand marles to see a smurdge?" ("...I travelled 10,000 miles to see a smudge.")

I felt like calling out that he should have spent just a little more money and hired a car and driven for an hour or so to the Wairarapa, where the skies are dark, then he would have seen more than just a fuzzy smudge.  I didn't get really good views until late March when I came up to the Manawatu coast where I live now.

I guessed that a travel agent had told him he'd get spectacular views of Halley's Comet in New Zealand, but neglected to mention the downside of city lights.

Another problem was that the media was hyping up Halleys by saying how spectacular it looked in 1910, but left out the fact that Earth went through its tail in 1910, so of course it looked spectacular.  That didn't happen in 1986, so the general public was disappointed, as often happens.

It was so good that there was no hype about Comet McNaught, which was far better than any other comet I've seen. It was visible in blue sky soon after sunset, but I didn't have a digital camera then.

[Kiwi]

TBH, most general purpose non-SLR film cameras didn't have it either. You really had to have an SLR to get the "B" mode.

Oh, I dunno about that.

My wonderful old near-mint Voigtlander Perkeo II has all the shutter speeds from B to 1-second to 1/500th of a second, apertures from f3.5 to f22, plus a depth-of-field scale, plus -- wait for it (better than digital cameras) -- fully manual focusing.  And it doesn't even take batteries!

But wait, there's more!  If you weren't too good at guessing the focus, you could also buy a high-quality rangefinder that hung on the camera strap in its own high-quality real leather case, and slipped into the camera's accessory shoe for use.

I think it was intended as a general purpose camera.

Now, I've forgotten when it was made and must Google it some day.  Maybe late 1950s or 1960s.

I always recommended that type of 120 folding-camera to trampers (hikers in the US, I believe) because they were tough enough to take a battering, fairly cheap, had no batteries to fail in the cold, and with their sturdy cases could be thrown across a stream into a bush if the tramper was about to get fully dunked.

Of course, some trampers wouldn't believe me, so spent much bigger money on SLRs, which they later regretted when the lenses filled up with fungus.  But the ones who did listen, bragged about their high-quality photos and excellent cameras.

But you're right -- in the latter days of amateur film cameras, it was often only SLRs which had B exposure.

Actually, the lil' ol' el-cheapo Russian Lubitel 120 TLR was another brilliant rough-use camera in the 1970s and 80s.

I knew a pro who used one photographing inside the Wellington motorway tunnel when it was being built.  He left his good camera at work and if he dropped the Lubitel in a puddle he just bought another one because it cost between NZ$14 and about NZ$25 while it was available.  I got him to sell me a 12" x 12" print of his so I could convince people it was a great camera.  It was a technically-excellent photo of a welder at work in the tunnel in dim light with the welding arc showing and sunlight in the distance.  There was very little flare, and I doubted that a Hasselblad or an RB67 could have done much better.

[Glom]

Just so happens that I'm in the market for a new camera too maybe, although I'm having second thoughts.

My current one is a Canon EOS 1000D I bought in spring 2009. It has been well used, but I was wondering about going better with a more modern CCD with my upcoming trip to Japan. Electronics always date so fast.

I'm not so sure I fancy spending £100s+ on a new one. I recently had some pics from my trip to Thailand printed big and they turned out stunning so maybe I'm being too fussy and decadent in thinking about changing.

[smartcooky]

I've often wondered this about flying observatories:  How was compensating for the aircraft's motion done, if at all?  The second shot has some circular star motion, but that can't be due to earth's rotation as the stars are too far from the south celestial pole.

As it was explained to me on the flight, it is done by flying an ever so slightly curved path to account for the rotation of the earth. The telescope is effectively "Altazimuth" mounted, with the altitude component being the only mechanical axis of freedom, and the azimuth component is provided by the changing compass bearing of the flight path.

Of course, the KAO was primarily used for infra-red and visible spectrography, so "field rotation" wasn't really an issue. Photography was very much a secondary application, (and I'm afraid to say that a couple of the, shall we say, less tolerant scientists aboard made every effort to make that abundantly clear to the photographers.

I have an article from The Dominion on 27 September 1985, titled Comet telescopes 'waste of money'.  It was terrible how some camera stores were conning the naïve public into buying scopes to see a naked-eye comet.  Almost any telescope was too big and all they needed at most was a pair of binoculars, so I was responsible for the article.  Some camera store people didn't like me doing that, but others cheered.

Yes.

Our astronomical society promoted the use of binoculars instead of telescopes (much to the annoyance of some camera stores) and more importantly we advocated the use of lower power larger objective lenses rather than high power. I used a a pair of 15 x 80 binoculars, and the Society bought a couple of pairs of 20 x 120s which we mounted on tripods for the public to view at our observatory. That observatory also had a mil-surplus Satellite Tracker installed in a small run-off-roof, a wide angled Altazimuth mounted right angled telescope similar to this...



It was perfect for the job, 150mm objectives with about 12 power, and the eyepiece height was fixed

[ka9q]

Another problem was that the media was hyping up Halleys by saying how spectacular it looked in 1910, but left out the fact that Earth went through its tail in 1910, so of course it looked spectacular.

I seem to remember hearing that. Did this cause an impressive meteor shower?

[BazBear]

Another problem was that the media was hyping up Halleys by saying how spectacular it looked in 1910, but left out the fact that Earth went through its tail in 1910, so of course it looked spectacular.

I seem to remember hearing that. Did this cause an impressive meteor shower?

I'm not sure about the meteor shower, but I know a lot of hucksters made a lot dough with things like masks that would protect you from the deadly cyanide gas etc.

[smartcooky]

Another problem was that the media was hyping up Halleys by saying how spectacular it looked in 1910, but left out the fact that Earth went through its tail in 1910, so of course it looked spectacular.

I seem to remember hearing that. Did this cause an impressive meteor shower?

I'm not sure about the meteor shower, but I know a lot of hucksters made a lot dough with things like masks that would protect you from the deadly cyanide gas etc.

Cyanogen, apparently]





Also good for a laugh....

[Kiwi]

Another problem was that the media was hyping up Halleys by saying how spectacular it looked in 1910, but left out the fact that Earth went through its tail in 1910, so of course it looked spectacular.

I seem to remember hearing that. Did this cause an impressive meteor shower?

I haven't seen anything about that from the time as most of the attention was on the comet, but something might show up in the 1910 newspapers.  However, the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, which peaks around 6 May, is associated with Halley's comet, as are the Orionids, which peak on 21 October.

The earth passed through Halley's tail on 18 or 19 May 2010 (depending on your time zone), so it would be interesting to see if the Eta Aquarids appeared years before from a previous pass of the comet.

Halley's comet also occulted the sun from earth on the 18th of May 1910, and I couldn't get my head around how it did that, but an illustration in the Melbourne, Australia, Age newspaper of 19 May shows that it had already looped around the sun and was heading away from it, toward earth, and on the 19th was roughly where Venus reaches in it's orbit, with it's tail pointing at earth, directly away from the sun.

The other thing about Halley's two passes of the 20th century is that from earth's perspective its tail was nearly at right angles at its greatest in 1910, whereas the tail pointed away from earth more quickly in 1986 and the comet was much further from earth on that pass.

The Age,  Melbourne, Friday 19 May 1910
Halley's Comet
Earth passes through tail – Panic stricken Negroes – Observations in Germany
London, 19th May

   American newspapers are filled with information regarding Halley's comet. The interest is increased by the fact that the earth passes through the tail of the comet to-day. Balls, receptions and breakfast parties have been arranged to take place on the roofs of hotels at New York while the comet is visible.
   In the Southern States of America the negroes are in a state of panic, as they believe that the comet heralds disaster to the earth. Many have suspended their work and are devoting their time to prayer meetings. Others are half crazed, and are hiding in cellars. Insurance agents are reaping a rich harvest owing to the prevalence of the belief that many people will perish when the earth passes through the comet's tail.
   At St Petersburg many people decided to spend last night in the churches. Continuous prayers were held.
   Professor Bannard, of Yerkes Observatory, states that the comet's tail is brighter than any portion of the Milky Way. Its length is 107 deg., and its greatest width is 5 to 6 deg.
   Several American observatories report that three large spots were visible on the sun yesterday. The spots were intensely black.
   Splendid photographs were secured by the observatory at Heluan (15 miles south of Cairo) by means of a Reynolds reflecting telescope. These photographs show a vivid nucleus enveloped in a tail with a parabolic outline
   The passage of the comet was seen at Aden. The head was invisible, and the tail resembled a searchlight.
   The American observatories report that the tail of the comet is still in the eastern horizon. The observatory at St Thomas, one of the Danish islands in the West Indies, reports that an enormous beam of light is stretched across two-thirds of the firmament.
   The observations of astronomers in France yielded no result. Many of the people of Paris stayed up all night. Some spent the time in feasting and others in praying, as they expected the end of the world would come.
   German observatories obtained merely negative results, except that at Munich, where a glimpse of the comet passing across the sun's disc was obtained. French and German astronomers observed the three large black spots on the sun.
   At the town of Oklahoma, in the United States, some religious fanatics seized a girl of sixteen years, and, after clothing her in spotless white robes, were about to kill her as a sacrifice to the comet. The police interfered in time to save her.
   At Constantinople many families withdrew their children from school with the idea that all of the members of their families might die together when the earth passed through the comet's tail. Thousands of people at Constantinople slept the night on the roofs and terraces of their houses.

Note: "Professor Bannard", of Yerkes Observatory is more likely E. E. Barnard.

[Kiwi]

Cyanogen, apparently.

Astronomy magazine, October 1985, has an excellent article about cyanogen, "Flammarion and the Comet's Poisonous Tail" on pages 26 to 30.

On 6 February 1910, Yerkes Observatory detected a minute quantity of cyanogen in Comet Halley's tail, as commonly happens with other comets.  In the right quantity and mixed with hydrogen, cyanogen produces the deadly poison hydrogen cyanide, or prussic acid.

Astronomers, biologists, chemists and toxicologists assured the world that no harm would come to anyone or anything, and the facts were spread far and wide.  Most people apparently got it, but the thought of earth passing through Halley's tail caused terror in the minds of the ill-informed, which were stirred up by a prediction of flamboyant French astronomer Camille Flammarion that the cyanogen gas would possibly snuff out all life on the planet.

He was wrong, but the New York Times reported on or about 17 May 1910, "Chicago Is Terrified -- Women Are Stopping Up Doors and Windows to Keep Out Cyanogen."

[smartcooky]

From Carl Sagan's landmark TV series COSMOS, the episode called "Heaven and Hell"

"As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some features in the spectrum of a comet and the spectrum of natural or "olefiant" gas. Huggins had found organic matter in the comets; in subsequent years cyanogen, CN, consisting of a carbon and a nitrogen atom, the molecular fragment that makes cyanides, was identified in the tails of comets. When the Earth was about to pass through the tail of Halley's Comet in 1910, many people panicked. They overlooked the fact that the tail of a comet is extravagantly diffuse: the actual danger from the poison in a comet's tail is far less than the danger, even in 1910, from industrial pollution in large cities. But that reassured almost no one. For example, headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle for May 15, 1910, include "Comet Camera as Big as a House," "Comet Comes and Husband Reforms," "Comet Parties Now Fad in New York." The Los Angeles Examiner adopted a light mood: "Say! Has That Comet Cyanogened You Yet? . . . Entire Human Race Due for Free Gaseous Bath," "Expect High Jinks," In 1910 there were parties, making merry before the world ended of cyanogen pollution. Entrepreneurs hawked anti comet pills and gas masks, the latter an eerie premonition of the battlefields of World War I."

[ka9q]

Plus ca la change...

One trait shared by today's Apollo deniers and 1910's Halley doomsayers is innumeracy -- mathematical illiteracy. It was easy to show the density of cyanogen striking the earth was vanishingly small, even if you ignore what happened when it contacted the atmosphere at high speed. And it was probably already known that we evolved an enzyme (rhodanese) to detoxify small amounts of cyanide because it occurs naturally in many foods (pitted fruits, cassava, etc).

But some (many?) people are simply immune to quantitative arguments. Or reason, for that matter.

Among scientists, the discovery of cyanogen in Halley's tail was probably an exciting discovery as it is the kind of molecule associated with life. Ironic, considering its toxicity to higher life forms.