Technology's alright but...

[John Parry]

I'd rigged my telescope to take my Pentax 200D, got the camera all set up, mounted it on the scope - but of course it unbalanced the rig. So I moved the telescope as far forward on the mount as it would go to restore the centre of gravity. Of course I moved it too far forward, and the result was the telescope hitting the ground with a bang, its fall broken by the camera.

The result was a broken LCD on the camera. Have you any idea how dependent you are on the display for setting up a digital SLR? Well I can't afford to get it fixed, but I needed the camera for some quick turn-around photos of a local festival (I don't often work to deadlines, but I'd promised...). So the first thing I had to do was restore the camera to factory settings (remember I'd set the camera up for astronomical images, and the ISO and self-timer settings had been altered, and all sort of tweaks applied).

The only way I had to do that was go to the manual, and remembering what I'd altered, work backwards from the control dials and switches. The timer was easy - I could tell when the delay disappeared, but the other settings involved a lot of time and trial and error, but luckily my lap-top has an SD card port, so it was a case of making an alteration and looking at the effect. Eventually, when I'd got it pretty much OK I was able to use the auxiliary and viewfinder displays to set the camera up for normal use again. I got the festival pictures out on time, and I have a usable (although slightly limited) camera again.

I got lucky with the light on this one - it was just right, even without a filter.



Regards - John

[Deleted]

John:

Sorry to hear your Pentax took a fall. Good job of working around the limitations and nice photo.

Wayne

[PeterW]

Very sorry to hear about your mishap with the Pentax, John, but congratulations on managing to work around it and keep using the camera, albeit in restricted mode. Well done!

PeterW

[John Parry]

Thanks Peter & Wayne

Luckily the LCD isn't the primary viewfinder on the Pentax unlike some DSLRs (although you can use it for a preview), and it has a lovely conventional viewfinder (I was laughing at your comment on the Oly Pen Wayne!). I was quite pleased with my brown trout - normally you would just see a swirl as it rose, but as I say, the light was just right to catch it without the surface reflecting too badly.

Regards - John

[ellacoya1]

Cool shot of the trout! I have a few nice pictures of fish, somewhere through water clear as glass...but never been able to catch the "moment" when one of them broke the water.