There and back again - Canon N3 to 2,5mm jack

I was a bit disappointed when I got my T-C80N3 remote control for my 60D. Several websites stated that the camera body would have the N3 connector, since the 30D, 40D and 50D did. However, it did not. It had a consumer 2,5mm jack connector.

The solution was to replace the N3 connector with a stock 2,5mm jack. The wiring is simple. However, it would be neccessary to revert to the N3 once in a while.

Thus, I mounted a 3,5mm female jack to the remote control, a 3,5mm male jack to the N3 connector, and got a stock 3,5mm to 2,5mm male-male jack adapter. Now I'm able to switch between those connectors with no trouble at all.

The setup has been working fine for half a year of rough cold-winter astrophotography. Pretty neat :)

A lot of people have described the wiring, e.g. http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tomheld/2900253681/

Annual grill summary

I intended to write a bit about each of these dishes, but I never got to do it. Instead I present a small selection of steak (and misc) images for inspirational purposes :)

Entrecôte

Huuuuuge tenderloin (3 kg)

Beer chicken

Whale meats

Blacks and white :)

A little side dish - chanterelle mushrooms

Asparagus season

Hamburgers

Beer chicken in sunset

T-bones

Pheasants in the oven on rotisserie

Home brewed beer :)

Venus passage 2012

I decided that it would be a fun DIY thing to create a solar filter for the Venus passage. Using an old hard drive disk with a drilled and polished hole, and old unexposed but processed positive film, I made this filter for my Tamron 500mm f/8 mirror lens. I'd rather use metal than paper for the frame, because the smallish hole where the filter film goes has to be perfectly round.

A word of warning, though: Using dias film as a solar filter is dangerous. It blocks visible light, but not neccessarily IR and UV radiation. It may thus cause long term damage to eyes and equipment.

Between sunrise and end of transit, there were only two 5-min windows of relatively clear skies. The resulting images have a color tint because of the dia film.. I'm not very happy with the focus. So that something to work on until next time, in 2117 :)

For an upcoming eclipse, I'll use real sun filter foil for the filter (http://www.njopsahl.no/vis_varegruppe.php?varegruppenr=2&merkenr=17&varetypenr=32).

I'll also use a real telescope instead of a camera lens. The optics are better, compared to my tamron lens. And I can fit a focus motor. And a RA axis motor. And the tripod is much much more sturdy.