Ubuntu 22.04 and VMware player with Windows 10 for stuff that is only available on Windows.

Denali, Wrangell-St Elias, and Kenai Fjords

They are in Kenai Fjords National Park.

Just returned from a trip to Alaska where we covered 3 national parks. The scenery and wild life were stunning.

I agree that the Sony 6000 series is a great start. I dumped all my Nikon gear and went with a Sony a6300 and love it. It is smaller, lighter weight with excellent image quality and lots of shooting options from completely automatic to control of every aspect of the image. There are a large variety of available lenses so he can start with something relatively inexpensive like the 16-50mm pancake and then add lenses as his interest and skill grow.

I'm curious as to which sharpening algorithm you used on #2. Was it unsharp mask or one of the AI driven methods? For comparison I looked mostly at the tiny dust particles on top of the green sphere and on the bowl. On #2, they have sharp edges but are larger and less distinct than on #1 and #3 which show much more detail.

I would rate them 1,3,2 from sharpest to least. 1 and 3 are very close and there is some difference in exposure, with 3 a bit lighter than 1. 2 looks like it had more artificial sharpening applied while the other two seem to have more inherent detail.

Beautifully done!

Depending on the apparent field of view, Saturn might look much larger from Titan. Titan is about 3 times the distance from Saturn as our moon is from Earth and Saturn is about 30 times the diameter of our moon. Therefore you would expect that looking at Saturn from Titan it would appear about 10x the size of our moon. It would be interesting to see how this might look with Saturn enlarged 10x :-)

It's very difficult to photograph the planets with any kind of lens, even a telescope, without using multiple exposures and digital stacking because of atmospheric turbulence. Occasionally, during a moment of still air you can get a semi-decent shot. This was taken on December 21 with a Sony a6300 through an 8", 2000mm focal length telescope further magnified with eyepiece projection and was one of a dozen or more shots where Saturn just looked like a blob in most of them. For comparison, the picture below was also taken through a similar telescope, but using a 640x480 webcam and stacking approximately 50 images selected from over 600.

Beautiful composite!

Here is a shot of both Jupiter and Saturn during the recent conjunction. This is a single exposure showing that it's very difficult to get good shots of the planets this way due to atmospheric movement. It was taken with a Sony a6300 through an 8" telescope with eyepiece projection at ISO 6400 and 1/25 sec. providing an equivalent focal length that I would estimate at around 5000 mm. Note that Jupiter is over exposed and Saturn is under exposed because of their relative brightness.

To get good shots of the planets requires multiple exposures and digital stacking. The two below were taken with a cheap 640x480 webcam through a telescope and digitally processed and would be impossible in a single exposure with any camera, even the best super zoom.

I suspect I'm too big to eat :-)

This one was sitting on a wire suspiciously eyeing me.

(Download)


(Download)

This little guy was picking up seeds on our deck that had dropped from the bird feeder above. I think I like the first one better. Sony a6300 and 70-350mm.

(Download)


(Download)

I like to shoot the moon, so to speak, when it is not full in order to capture the shadows along the terminator. Notice the illuminated mountain peaks in the dark area along the bottom where the sun is just rising. Shot with a Sony a6300 and Sony 70-350 at 350mm, f6.3, 1/400, ISO 800.

(Download)