Film: Kodak PPF 400
Notes:
The following are the first photos* I took with a new Televue Pronto 70mm
refractor. You are looking at what is essentially
my proof sheet which is meant to be loaded off a local hard disk. All photos
were shot using Kodak PPF 400 (unhypered)
at 480mm focal length, manually guided under mostly windy (and cold)
conditions. The camera used was a Model II
Taurus astro camera (35mm film), which has a built-in off-axis guider.
* Except for some tests I did from my back yard in Cerritos which definitely
aren't worth looking at because of light pollution!
I did not use the optional field flattener because it requires the use of a
T-threaded camera (a project for another day).
The distortion of the unflattened Pronto field is evident on some of the
frames because of this. Also I wasn't
careful about composing the shots so the shadow of the guider mirror appears
at the edge of some shots... oh, well,
live and learn...
There is also some noticeable chromatic aberration (violet halos) around
bright blue stars, but that's what I expected since
the Pronto is an ED glass doublet design.
My conclusion using the Pronto was that it performed very nicely and,
considering how expensive a 500mm telephoto lens costs,
it is a good value, especially since I plan to use it as a portable
telescope on trips. For portable use, it could
be lighter, but if you like the feel of weight in precision equipment, it's
definitely the one to get.
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