Hi hha1

I miss typed, it is the DMC FZ 50, made by Panasonic.

I did not use a clock drive. At wide angles, or non-telescopic views, over a 15 second interval of time, the "streaking" is minimal. If you notice the second picture where the telephoto is extended all the way, there is considerable streaking of the stars; evidence of a lack of clock drive.

The second photo was a 30 second exposure and the stated x magnification is 21.4 times. I suppose if I measured the streak length, checked the angle position on 2 am on the day I took the picture, I could come up with the true magnification of the photo. This camera has a 12 x optical zoom, but if the pixels used are dropped from the max of 10 million to 2 (which I used in the photo) an extended zoom is allowed. This not quite the same as choosing a digital zoom, which produces a “grainer”, picture.

(I took some pictures of the moon with the camera and at the “21.4 X “ rating, the moon does not “fit” in the picture, a small piece of the rim is missing. As I recall this is probably closer to a 15 magnification. It has been a while since I used my old telescope with a mounted camera).

I also boosted the contrast and color and minimized the noise for the photo. Compression was set to “low”.

I really like the camera. It even allows a limited asa setting of 3200! Unfortunately this asa setting can not be used with extended exposures but with an asa of 1600 and a 60 second exposure, and a wide angle setting, I will get a picture of hundreds and hundreds of stars when I can only see a couple of dozen or so. Actually, a 15 second exposures are better since the sky will still be black and the stars will still look like points. I’m having fun taking picture of constellations. It is as if I can “see” the stars as they would be without all the pollution.

The camera is new for me and I haven’t loaded the software to tap in to the details of the picture when the picture was taken, I’m using older camera software to look at the photos and the detailed file information is missing. I’ll work on it tomorrow. .

snowflake