mrz80

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 :))

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.

 

ARGH! I'm rapidly approaching my wit's end. I'm trying to figure out how the blazes to automate shooting a range of shutter speeds with a tethering app on my Linux laptop. I've tried Darktable and Entangle. From stuff I've seen on various online forums both apps ought to be able to do this, but I can't for the life of me figure out how in either, nor can I find any useful information online on how to do it in either. I'd really rather not have to point and click my way down the shutter speed menu and spend the entire totality diddling with a keyboard. :(

 

Anyone familiar with either of these apps, or could suggest another? I'd even take a skeleton of a shell script I could use against gphoto2 at this point.

Canon PowerShot G2

 

Faith Grossnicklaus

I have several old film cameras sitting around, including a legacy Ikoflex DLR that was my grandfather's, a Nikon FM, a Nikkormat EL, and several others, all now just for show and to feed my nostalgia fetish. All of my photography is now done on my Nikon DSLR's: D5100 and D7100, with my cell phone covering photos-of-opportunity and snapshot duties. I'm saving up for a D810 and more FX lenses (someday), but my two APS-C cameras will have to do for while.

 

Heh, your closet sounds about like mine. I've got my Dad's old Ikoflex and a stack of lenses, an F too old for any metered finder, an F2AS (my absolute favorite film camera of all time), and my wife's Pentax K-1000. There's a miscellaneous handful of Panasonic and Sony compact all-in-ones kicking about the place (I pinch my wife's Sony Cybershot for bike rides - it fits easily in a jersey pocket, has great image quality for a dinky point-n-shoot, and it's a cinch to operate one handed). There might still be a N70 in the box in the closet now that I think about it. :) For "serious" picture-taking, I used a D50 for a lot of years, until prices on refurb'ed D7000s dropped below the Spousal Pain Point :p and I grabbed one up along with an 18-200. I'll likely stick with the D7000 for however many years it lasts; it's more camera than I need most of the time already. The biggest boons on the D7000 were the AI-S coupling and the UNREAL low light capabilities. Oh, and I guess the Galaxy S4 counts as a digital cam too; it does pretty well for a cellphone.:cool:

Well, the decision was taken out of my hands (someone else bought the Nikon 80-400 :) ) so I pulled the trigger on the Sigma 400 APO. It'll get here next Friday. Now to scare up a 2x teleconverter, and download some camera control packages to try out on the D7000. The solar film came yesterday so I can start work on the solar filter for the lens soon as it gets here. My wife did some research and found a park called "The Dike" along one edge of the Clemson campus, which looks like an ideal place to set up. Two weeks and counting! :D

I may have missed it in this long thread but is there a detailed map showing the smaller county roads that are in the path of totality? I envision a cloudy day and trying to figure out where to drive to avoid big traffic jams by finding small roads that cross the path of the moon.

 

Total Solar Eclipse 2017 - Interactive Google Map

 

It's an overlay onto Google Maps. Zoom in right down to street level to your hearts content. Pretty handy! :D

OK, thanks all for a VERY enlightening thread. Between this discussion, Mr. Eclipse's website, and some other threads here and there, I've got a pretty good picture of what to expect and how to go about managing shooting the eclipse. Now it comes down to pulling the trigger on a lens, and I'm completely in Waffle Mode :confused:. So, a last minute straw poll before I pull the trigger (sometime this weekend to allow for shipping, setup and practice time):

 

1) That silly little 500mm mirror lens

2) A Sigma 400/5.6 APO mf , prob. with a 1.4x converter

3) A Nikon 80-400/4.5-5.6, and crop

 

Option 1's just listed for completeness' sake; far as I can tell the cheap reflex lenses have too much sample variation to risk getting a dud. The 80-400'd be the most useful *after* the eclipse, for concerts and airshows where my 18-200 daily-driver doesn't have quite enough reach. But the Sigma and a converter would get me to 500+mm, and the D7000 has plenty of low-light capability that I'm not too worried about losing the extra F-stop to the converter, and it'd be quite a bit less expensive. :) Any last minute thoughts?

My 2 cents, just as a quick response,

first: have you witnessed a total solar eclipse before--ie, NOT partial ?

if no, I would say spend more time watching it and less time trying to photograph it. If you are a novice at both the eclipse and taking pictures of the sun/moon, my opinion is that it is far more worthy to watch the spectacle, and getting a couple of token snaps than fiddling with the camera and losing viz time. At best you have 2.5 minutes. Time economy is essential.

 

I've gotten several semi-good lunar eclipse shots before, but this is my first stab at a solar eclipse. I'm not looking to do much fancy, just a couple of corona/photosphere brackets, and maybe a try at a diamond ring. We'll be in Clemson, SC; according to the charts I've seen we should have just a hair over two minutes of totality.

 

---you have another chance in the USA about 7 years from now, after that it will be necessary to chase them to the ends of the earth---

 

I saw a track for the 2024 ecipse; looked like just a short stretch in the southwest somewhere; have to look at that in more detail.

 

If yes, (someone correct my math if necessary) a 200 on a Dx is like a 300 on a full frame. A 2x converter (of good quality) would produce the eq of a 600 and I think that would be fine. Even a 1.4 would produce a very useful image. There are many shots out there with a normal lens, just depends on your composition desired. They all work.

But, you can judge for yourself...take a picture of the moon with your setup with different configurations--the 200 by itself, with a 1.4, with a 2x. That is how big the sun's eclipsed disc will appear--the moon and the sun are the same apparent size otherwise the eclipse would not look like it does. So, the moon can serve as a proxy to test your rigging.

That's a terrific idea! Moon would have to be the same apparent size as the sun for an eclipse to work, wouldn't it? :cool: Thanks for the suggestion.

 

I have thought for full frame a 600-700 to maybe 1000mm ish lens would be best, but that is just my opinion. There are people who will shoot this with 2000mm +plus lenses/telescopes. Aside: the equipment that comes out for total solars is breath-taking stuff. The longer you go, the more likely you are to see prominences, but there will be less corona. I think 600-1000 balances that nicely.

 

I'd toyed with the idea of loading some b&w into the F2, but if I'm having sensor-coverage concerns on DX, then I definitely don't have the optical resources for 35mm! My father in law's got a fairly large, quite good telescope. Maybe in 2024 I can talk him into an eclipse hunting expedition.

 

Re: the mirror lens. Do your research. A 600 6.3 sounds tempting, but that assumes the IQ is good. The net is full of reports of crappy copies of the cheap mirror lenses. I will be using a cheap mirror reflex lens myself, a Bausch and Lomb 4000, 1200mm f10, I think. It, too, has checkered reports.

Astromart Reviews - B&L Criterion 4000 - a scope with Junk Bond Status

 

Mine has quality enough for me, I think I got a good one, but there's a lot of junk out there.

In your situation I think the converter on a good lens would be better than taking a chance on a new lens at this stage. The eclipse is less than a month away. You have one more full moon to check your setup. Getting close.

 

The reviews I've read of that "everyone relabels it" Samyang are all over the map. Apparently there's lots of sample variation. That's making me nervous, and looking much harder at the teleconverter approach (despite everyone's favorite nay-saying iconoclast Rockwell's disparagement of teleconverters as a genre :p (though in his defense, I have found his lens reviews to be pretty spot-on - I got that 70-210F4 on his recommendation, and it's a terrific lens for how little it set me back!)).

Ok, seeking advice here. From various places I've read, looks like for a DX sensor, somewhere around 400-500mm will get a decent size solar disc and still leave some rattle room around the edges for corona at totality. So, given a painfully limited budget, a D7000, and either an 18-200 or a 70-200 (the 18-200 is starting to show mechanical problems, so I'll likely go with the old-faithful 70-200 F4), would the collective wisdom of the group suggest a 1.4 or 2x teleconverter, or try one of those "everybody sells 'em" Samyang (sp?) 500mm 6.3 reflex lenses? Keep in mind the painfully limited budget. :)

<p>I was born in 1964, just after my Nikon F. Dad shot Nikon, so very early on (modulo a digression into a Pentax Spotmatic 'cause my uncle had one and I could borrow his big bag -o- lenses when I was a poor college student) I latched onto Nikon as my dream. The notion that I could take a lens off any of my Nikons and mount it on any other of my Nikons and have it at least pass light in the general direction of the shutter, along with the essential indestructibility of most Nikon gear, keeps me wedded to it (anyone wanna sell me a D90 cheap? :) ).<br>

<br />One thing I dearly miss about the older manual SLRs was simplicity - I could hold the thing in my left hand, and work all the controls - shutter, speed, film advance, aperture and focus - without moving my right hand or taking my eye off the finder. No can do any more. Hey Nikon, howabout you revise your cameras' UI so that the aperture ring still does does what you'd expect? Ah well, that's progress for you.<br>

Oh yeah, my most recent camera acquisition *is* considerably older than I am - a Zeiss Ikoflex rescued from dark oblivion in a closet :). <br>

<br />Interestingly, this same sort of "new v. old" argument crops up in ham radio circles all the time.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The "person" represented in the photo seems unharried, at rest</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think I would disagree with that assessment. To me, the subject appears tense, nervous. The set of her shoulders, the way her arms and legs are tightly drawn together, the position of her hands suggesting she's been nervously wringing them, the way her head is turned as if anticipating someone's arrival... I dunno, what photo suggests to me is (and yes I'm a hopeless romantic) a nervous bride about to meet her husband for the first time. Anyhow...<br>

As for the larger question of "what makes a nude art"... I think it's largely in how UNimportant any erotic or sexual appeal of the subject being nude is to the overall work. It's much more how the shape and shading of the body interact with the lighting, the background, and maybe to some extend how jarring the juxtaposition of the nude subject is when related to the setting or action going on in the rest of the picture.</p>

<p>Nice to see Nikon still supporting AI lenses, but I SURE wish they'd go ahead and move that support down into a lower price bracket. My dream dSLR would still be something approximately as capable (and as lowcost) as my old D50, with AI metering. And no a D40/D3100/D5000 wouldn't cut it 'cause they don't have a focus motor, which means my AF-D lenses wouldn't be AF'ing :).</p>

Now all you need is a Hello Kitty emblem on it somewhere. Seriously, I'd never do something that outlandish to my ancient F, but it *does* look like you did a darned good job of it. Nice to see the old battleaxe still in use.