OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics Southern Cross

No subliminal message, it was one of my few photos with the Southern Cross clearly visible.
If I were to title it I'd call it "Storm front over Bowenfels" (south of Lithgow, NSW on the highway)

Same tree, same day:



Same location/time:




The Aussie version I used to sell (bosses insistence) were branded Metex and they were absolute CRAP. No two identical spares fitted the same or even fitted. The cranks continually cracked.

I used to recommend customers purchase the nice little Chinese stationary we sold for just a few dollars more. We made bigger profits on the Indian junk but every engine/part I sold there were always issues. I never had a Chinese industrial returned for warranty but had every Indian piece of rubbish returned at least once.

Someone may find the Southern Cross in the following two images but I'm not even going to try and look (you'd never guess, I'm into photography and astronomy)




All my own shots.

Lovely photography!
can you give details of the camera, lens, exposure, aperture, etc? Tracking mount?

Are you involved with any observatories? One or two in the Blue Mts from what I remember...

(sorry for off topic)

Thanks,

Hi Leo G
The only Metex I could fined looks more like a copy of a small Petter
I would like to track down which one was Southern Cross
This site is about the best out of India
http://www.vidhataindia.com/wpeter.html
Ian

They had the petter copy too.

I wouldn't know where to track one down now. My bosses company (LPM) was the Aussie agents for them back in the early 90's. That was in Newtown, NSW but the boss sold out, retired and died. The company moved but went more gas sales (gas kits for vehicles) whereas when I was there I was responsible for all forklift and industrial spares which somehow went to the metex and other Indian made crap.


My camera is an old Nikon D80 10.2MP. The lens varies for the job obviously but the Milky Way was shot with my Samyang F2.8 14mm ED (an excellent value wide angle ED lens),30 second exposure (ISO 800-1000) and the lightning was shot with a Nikkor 18-55 F3.5, ISO 400. As for aperture and exposure times I have no idea on the lightning shots but it likely would have probably been F3.5 and bulb exposure. I release the trigger after the lightning has appeared. I use an adequate quality tripod (it's no Manfrotto) and an intervalometer for remote triggering to avoid shake. I could check exposures but it would be near impossible to find original images to read the data (I shoot in RAW mostly). I have thousands of images which I mostly don't share anywhere.

I'm a member of an astronomical society but have no involvement with observatories. I instead use my collection of telescopes in my back yard on a computerised GOTO mount.

I have refractors in 80, 90, 102 and 152mm and reflectors in 130 and 200mm

Here's the identical lightning shot I posted above as shot by my son on his mobile phone (LG 13MP camera) and it was his first attempt with me. It's an amazing photo and while not having the camera and lens quality of my shot it's a wider angle shot and shows the mountains.
It was quite coincidental that we both got the same shots of the same strike at the same moment.
I think it's a striking shot, especially since my son has little to do with photography due to fine motor skill problems and the inability to hold a camera steady (he does however love my somewhat large-ish collection of antique cameras and equipment).

Thanks Leo!