The classic white moon

How holidays are short and it's time for the new term again. Legends always say that the (almost) full moon always make man go crazy and stuff... So after seeing the (almost) full moon yesterday up close and personal I started to do some crazy stuff to. But only to the moon.


Red or pink moons for you?

The minolta 75-300mm lens could only fetch a focal length of 450mm equivalent on the alpha system, which is 18mm more than the 432mm equivalent of the native lens of my H1. Considering that the alpha has twice the megapixels of H1, I could at most get a moon that is 47% greater than the native H1 moon (or 636mm equivalent at 5mp). But if I add the 1.7x tcon to my H1, I would get 734mm equivalent for H1 or 15% larger than my Alpha minolta moon! So a crazy idea was born!


Yellow or green moons?

My minolta lens is non APO lens, i.e. I can't get a teleconverter for dSLR to increase the focal length. Moreover, these teleconverter eats light for lunch and would make lens really dark, and they aren't common and aren't cheap either. The H1 tcon lens on the other hand do not cost any light and is many times cheaper. It is optically excellent with the H1 but wonder how it would fare with the Alpha. So I just placed the tcon in front of the Alpha and looked through the viewfinder. Bingo! Now I just need a step up ring to attach the tcon to my Alpha since the threads are different size. Off to search for the old market!


Blue or violet moons? Having fun with photoediting indeed...

So now armed with my minolta lens, my step up ring and my sony dh1758 tcon, I awaited for the night to do the moon. On paper, I could get up to 765mm equivalent, just a bit more than the H1 but the megapixel differents meant I could get a 47% larger moon (1080mm @ 5mp crop) than I could ever get with the H1. Size does matter? Afterall I'm just playing around with it. Sure, the camera had difficulty focussing with that small rock attached (and eat up all the battery juice) but I gave a shot with manual focus and the results was posted yesterday night.

I'm crazy isn't it?


Heck! How about all the rainbow colours on the moon at the same time?

Those dSLR purist would complain with my unorthodox methods while pixel peepers maypoint out that this method could have increased chromatic aberration bla bla stuff... Others may say that this is cheating! You are not suppose to stack lens from point and shoot cameras on an SLR. But that's the same reason why I choose Sony/Minolta over Canon or Nikon! For some reasons Canon/Nikon users would try to convince you to join them and boast of their superiority (High end lens, maybe, photographer, nah...). They troll others in forums and stuff and they haunt you in your real life. They maybe your friends, your relatives or your colleagues but they always say the same darn thing. They are on a crusade to reform photographers from professional to amatuers alike, it's like a religion or gasp! A cult!

When I heard of the Minolta story, that they produced great cameras and garnered a huge market (with over 16 million lens sold) with little to no marketing (they sell by word of mouth), I knew that this is the brand for me. Too bad they got sued and failed to survive as a company but thankfully, Sony took over their innovations at the same time as I was learning with my H1 and provided this next step up from my prosumer.

I don't care if C or N has twice the number of lens M/S would ever have, I don't care if in lens IS is better than in body AS (H1 is in lens IS while Alpha is in body AS, which is better? I always attach the lens adaptor and hold the H1 like an SLR and use the EVF to get a good grip anyway. And both cameras are comfortable to hold with good weight distributions unlike C where user complain of their poor ergonomics). Ok, I simply don't care if the camera could produce the goods and I get photographs that is pleasing to my and also Sucre eyes and capture those special moments!

Did I say I went crazy earlier?

Ok, enough of banter... time to go back to work tomorrow.

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