On the evening of 20 January 2007, I had the opportunity to see comet McNaught from the coastal road between Camps Bay and Llandudno, near Cape Town in South Africa. Taking photos of the comet proved very challenging indeed: there was a fierce wind blowing, which shook everything including my camera. As I didn't have a tripod with me (I would have had to bolt it to the ground in any case, and hang some lead weights on it for stabilisation), I was glad to find a solution: I rested my camera on a short wooden pole to which the guardrails alongside the road were affixed. By pressing down as hard as I could onto the camera, it kept still for long enough to take the long exposure shots. The lens's vibration reduction certainly also helped. You can see the results in this gallery. (Shot with a Nikon D70 and the 18-200mm VR Nikkor).
