The Magic of Digital Cameras!

We had an observing session at this week's meeting and I decided to try and take some photographs in the dark!  This post is not about the photograph itself,  but rather about how I was able to make the photograph in the first place.  I have a 50mm f/1.4 lens.  f/1.4 refers to the aperture of the lens - the maximum opening that lets the light through.  Most lenses these days for digital cameras are f/4 or so.  So the f/stops between F/4 and F/1.4 go like this:  1.4, 2.0, 2.8. 4.0.  So that means my 1.4 aperture lens lets in EIGHT times more light, which is a help because standing there with my camera, it was difficult to see Mark at his telescope because it was pretty dark!  The other thing was the "film speed."  When I was working, my films had a "film speed" of 400.  For dim light situations, there was a film that was 1600.  In my SONY a7 camera, I just kept dialing up the numbers until I got to - get this, 12,800!  That is an astounding number.  Unimaginable, in fact, but that's the magic of modern digital sensors!  So I was in the dark, and the camera choose a shutter speed of 1/8th of a second.  And that is how I got this "impossible" photograph, through the magic of modern camera technology.