Hello everyone, as many of you know, the Cameralabs' home of Queenstown, New Zealand is surrounded by mountains. Peter, a friend of mine, loves climbing them, and one of his latest 'walks' brought him round onto the face of the Remarkables that's visible from the town itself.
As someone with a telescope, I always wondered if I could capture a photo of him on the mountain, and yesterday we had our chance! I was aided by Stefan.
We used a Canon EOS 60D at prime focus on my Televue Genesus SDF telescope. The scope has a focal length of 540mm at f5.4, so with a cropped body it delivered an equivalent focal length of 864mm. The distance from camera to man on mountain using GPS worked out at approximately 4800m, taking elevation into account. It was great having line-of-sight as we could easily use walkie talkies to confirm timing and positions.
I'll start with a wide angle view to put the mountain and the telescope's view into perspective. The red box represents the area captured by the telescope and 60D.
Now for the view straight from the scope at 864mm and uncropped. Peter is positioned in the very middle of the frame with a red top - you might just spot him...
...but to make it easier, here's a 100% crop:
We were all sceptical whether we'd manage to capture Peter at all at this distance, but we managed - just!
It was actually really hard to find him in the scope, especially as a low-cost 2x teleconverter I was initially using greatly impacted the resolving power. We had a big image, pointing at the right place, but no Peter! Removing the teleconverter delivered a smaller image, but there he was! Thanks to Stefan for his keen eye and sharp focusing, and thanks also to Queenstown Cameras for their support.
Gordon
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