August 2017 solar eclipse preparation

And here is one taken at 1:17 pm, point of max coverage at this latitude. Same shooting data as above except shutter speed was 1/250.

 

In both images all camera settings were manual. To obtain accurate focus, I had AF turned on, focus on white clouds. Then I turned off AF . Used Live View to got the image in the LCD.

 

I just bought the Olympus 300mm f/4 lens. So this event gave me the opportunity to compare the Panasonic 100-400mm lens against it. The first two images were shot with the Panasonic 100-400mm lens @400mm; both using Olympus EM1. I think they look at least as sharp as Image #3 (don't you?), which was shot with the Olympus 300mm+Mc1.4 @420mm on Olympus EM1 Mark II.

 

The 2nd image demonstrates the maximum eclipse from where I was. The clouds began to set in on the 3rd image.

 

Edited August 22, 2017 by Mary Doo

Diamond Ring by David Stephens, on Flickr

In NJ the magnitude of the eclipse is only 0.78.

I tried the pinhole viewer but instead of viewing it on paper I used translucent parchment paper. The image was very fuzzy. That got me thinking that a real camera lens would give better resolution. I thought what better to try than a 100 year old camera so I brought out an old Kodak 2A folding brownie and taped some parchment at the film plane. The image was small but very sharp and I could make out the position of the moon across the sun very easily. Since the last total eclipse was in 1918 it was nice to use something from that era.

All things considered, it went quite well. The tripod was too flimsy and the focus was a bit too fiddly, but I had a grand old time. Big problem I hit was, leaving the camera on live view so much let the sensor and electronics overheat, and the camera crashed right as I was starting the 1/4000-1sec run at the start of totality. Had to pop the battery and let the camera cool off a few times during the waning phase.

 

This was the D7000, Sigma 400/f5.6APO mf tele, Kenko Pro 2x converter, homemade filter with Thousand Oaks filter medium... manual, f/11, 1/250, ISO 200.

 

I already posted some on Sandy's thread, but this looks like the place. Weather 20 miles west of Rexburg, Idaho, was exquisite. I have quite a bit of PP yet to do, particularly to combine partials into a series, and to compile several corona images into one. However, these three are my best first look, all taken with a Nikon D7100 and Tamron 150-600mm/5-6.3. Surprisingly, the most challenging technical issue was obtaining exact focus. (Autofocus on my Tamron lens failed a few weeks ago and I didn't dare send it in with any chance I wouldn't get it back in time.) All images captured as NEF raw files and processed in LR5:

Note: Members of our group who set out for home in mid-afternoon took about 13 hours to make what is normally a 3-1/2 hour trip. Our drive home today encountered some residual eclipse traffic (think over 50% of vehicles were campers, RV's, tent trailers, or other vehicles full of camping gear) and took about 5 hours. Really, really glad we went.

I made the trek out to a friend's ranch at 8,200 feet above Dubois Wyoming and in addition to some wonderful observing time at night, shot the eclipse using some black and white film. I used a Hasselblad 501CM, 60mm F3.5 CFI lens @f8 for 1/15th of a second ( for this exposure ) with Kodak Tmax 400 pushed to 800.

 

I also used a mirror which I will be replacing with a first surface one this week. The whole apparatus moves in a unified manner as to keep the mirror perfectly true to the frame of the camera. I just ran the film today, got two printable frames.

 

I had a great eclipse experience and am very happy I made the several hundred mile trip to Nebraska to view it. I had two pieces of bad luck. First, I got chiggers at the viewing site. :) I'd do it again even with that unfortunate occurrence. Second, although clouds got in our way a little throughout the eclipse, they decided to be most obstinate right at totality, so I literally only got about two 5 second glimpses through broken clouds during the 2.5 minute magic time. Oh well.

A few more pix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Doo said:

"

David and John, it must have been quite an effort to point your gigantic lenses upward for the total eclipse - with the tripod getting in the way etc."

 

It really wasn't too bad at all to set up. I had an aligned finderscope on the big tube. That is a dedicated telescope tripod with an equatorial wedge and a clock drive that I ran from an old motorcycle battery I had. It was aligned to the north, again eyeballing it with the compass on my smartphone. Before I left I pretty much eyeballed the setting for the wedge at what I thought would be the latitude of where I thought I would be observing in Nebraska, and I was pretty close, so once I had the sun in the frame, it stayed there with just a bit of tweaking. The mount has fine controls for up and down and right and left. I illuminated my viewfinder to see where the sun was in the frame, and I had a right angle finder. It was very sturdy, but even so, the wind was strong enough to shake things a bit at times.

In addition, you'll see a shaving mirror that I mounted on the tripod so I could see live view without crouching down. It all worked much better than I expected. And if I ONLY remembered to remove the solar filter after diamond ring....ugh

I did get this panorama with my smart phone

 

and a timelapse

 

My mistake was I changed the routine on the fly--don't do that, esp with such a tight time window; but I thought I had to because at iso 100 the images were dark during partial. So I went up to 400. Threw me off. then I "decided" to do the panorama right at beginning of totality, instead of the planned after totality pix shot. And when I went back to the camera to shoot the totality pix, I forgot the filter was still on...DOH! Didn't realize that til I saw nothing showing up in my viewing mirror, thought I lost the sun, slewed the camera a bit, realized what i did, found it for a lucky, but sloppy diamond ring. UGH!!! Well, 2024 has nearly 4 minutes of totality and I could've recovered with an extra 90 seconds--or so I am telling myself!:eek::oops:

I went back through the set and found another couple I more or less deem worth uploading...

 

The ONE bit of pre-totality cloudiness was one small patch that only lasted a minute, much to everyone's relief.

 

This was the best of the diamond ring shots; with the lens flare (which I'm not sure is attributable to the Sigma itself, the converter, or maybe the interface between the two) it sort of looks like an eyeball with the optic nerve sticking off the back. :)

 

And finally a post-event full solar disc, with so dreadfully few sunspots (a calamity from the point of view of a ham radio nut with a VHF fixation :))

Did anyone get a shot of the International Space Station as it transited the sun during the partial eclipse?

Did anyone get a shot of the International Space Station as it transited the sun during the partial eclipse?

I was in eastern NE, so I didn't. For total eclipse locations that possibility was limited to a very small area in Wyoming.

The aftermath of the eclipse for some rented equipment: Rental Camera Gear Destroyed by the Solar Eclipse of 2017

Wow! How did people do that?! Better re-check my lenses. to see if they are still acting normal. :(

Wow! How did people do that?! Better re-check my lenses. to see if they are still acting normal. :(

You had a filter on, so you're fine. The people who did this damage needed to do a little more homework or think through their plan a little bit better. Ouch!

I've never interested it before, but it's so interesting. I will have a lot of questions about the solar eclipse. Edited November 6, 2017 by Sandy Vongries

HOLY JESUS CHRIST! Okay, after seeing those photos my life wont be the same again. This is a legit paradise...