Well... Luck didn't help! I guess there's no substitute for skill...
I got set up with the Oly E-510 with 140-300 lens piggy backed on the C8 with the DMK running at 60 FPS at f/10. The weather was clear and hot, but the seeing very ordinary.
From the Calsky page I worked out the ISS was going to pass very close to Lalande crater so I centred the scope on that.
Checked and double checked the focus on the E-510 and then switched it off till close to transit time.
That was about the extent of things going right...
.
45 seconds before transit I switched on the E-510 and started capturing at 3 fps.... it didn't go too long before the buffer was full and it was back down to chugging away at about 1 per second.
I had deliberately chosen to use live view so the mirror wouldn't be flopping up and down in the E-510... well there must be something else mechanically moving around in there because every time it took a shot the video from the DMK was moved.
Too late to do anything about it by that stage, just persevere!
Well, I played the AVI from the DMK (2076 frames) and couldn't see the ISS, so I looked at every frome individually... no ISS
... oh, well... there's always the stills from the DSLR...
Well, they were in focus enough to recognise that it was the moon that was out of focus
... I persevered... I looked though them all... no smudges even remotely like an ISS... I don't know what happened to change focus...
... my test shots were sharp!
Oh well... it was a learning experience.
Next time the E-510 goes on a separate tripod.
Maybe I'll try the f/6.3 reducer on the C8 and the DMK until I have some success at finding where the ISS will pass
.
There's always next time!
Al.
