Christmas Bonanza!

So Santa went nuts for Christmas this year and provided me with lots of new bits and pieces for my Astronomy adventure so I thought I would share my new equipment with the world.

First up is something I have been in great need of which is some nice warm Quechua snow boots. There has been several times that I have been outside for only two hours and realised I can no longer feel my toes! I either cut my evening short or I end up suffering with rather sore feet as the feeling comes back to them whilst I drive home. Santa was pretty cheap with these boots to be honest as they only cost £10 and the basically look like welly boots. However, they have supposedly been tested down to -18C for someone is at rest so I am pretty confident they should do a much better job that my trainers have been doing.

Next up is my major present of the year which is a Canon EOS 700d. Finally I can stop borrowing my friends DSLR when I want to do some imaging and use my own. It comes with an 18-55mm STM lens which should be useful for basic things but I suspect this lens is more going to be used for daytime photography when I just want to take some quick pictures. To be honest, I am new to DSLR cameras so I think there will be a fair bit of learning to get through but I am looking forward to it.

I also recieved a prime lens which is the wonderful Samyang 14mm f/2.8 widefield lens which I hope to use for future milky way & constellation shots. I have read good reviews for this “budget” lens and whilst it is manual focus, this won’t really cause a problem for astrophotography shots as I can just set it to infinity focus.

My last camera related gift of Christmas is a tripod which means I can actually take some long exposure shots. One day I hope to get an EQ mount and fit the camera to that but for now a fixed tripod will at least enable to get some decent widefield shots. The tripod I received is a Red Snapper RST-283 & RSH-61 Ball Head which isn’t as expensive as some of the Manfrotto tripods but it seems to be well built and should be stable. The brief play around I have had with it has shown me that it may take me a while to get used to the movements of a ball head but it does offer a fair bit of flexibility in regards to moving the camera.

Santa didn’t forget my telescope either and my final gift of the year is a Skywatcher UHC filter. A few times recently I have contemplated that the views of various nebulas would potentially be enhanced by the use of an UHC filter. So now we shall see if I am right or not, I understand that dark skies are the best way to get better views but hopefully the UHC filter will still help the view from my back garden.