New Forest Observatory ®

Well the new 2600MC CMOS camera from First Light Optics arrived, it has been fired up, and all is well!

Also the USB Canon lens focuser manufactured by Astromechanics and distributed by Ali Express also arrived. At first I didn’t think it was working properly, but when my son came over and had a look it turned out to be 2 duff USB C cables 🙁 With a working USB C data cable attached to the focuser – all ran as expected.

Next move is to bring computer 3 indoors and put all the necessary software on there before finally swapping out Sky90(3) for 200mm lens(3).

Then it’ll be imaging time!

Dad captured this group of Fakirs/Holy men on his travels. Once again we have the original sepia print at the top, followed by the Grok cleaned-up and colourised print, followed by the amazing Grok animation.

This is a very interesting image taken by Dad in WWI in beautiful downtown Kabul. I turned the original first image above into a B&W image (from the sepia print) using Photoshop. I wondered why the two locals were giving Dad the evil eye, but a close inspection of the image shows they are in chains! Further close inspection of the image shows that ALL these guys are in chains (they must have been a hard bunch) but Grok clearly didn’t recognise this in the animation!

More from Dad’s WWI plate photography in the Himalayan foothills, this time we have a wood-collector and his Missus, who seems to be a leaf collector.

The first original sepia print was colourised and cleaned up by Grok, and then the image was animated by Grok who added a sound track complete with the sound of the wood-collectors walking stick hitting the hard dry earth.

Possibly bordering on the politically incorrect, but that’s how it was in those days! This is again a Grok cleaned up and colourised version of one of Dad’s WWI sepia prints, together with the Grok animation.

This time we have the Memsahib on her tea plantation with her son being carted about by one of the locals. The son and the local’s face say it all.

This is another one of Dad’s WWI images from the Himalayan foothills. The first image is the Grok colourised and cleaned up version of the original sepia print showing a wood-collector. The video below the still image was created by Grok which also added the appropriate sound track.