[Leica] Eclipse photos
Peter Klein
boulanger.croissant at gmail.com
Wed Aug 23 18:48:24 PDT 2017
Well done, Howard! I pretty much took Larry's advice, except for the
part about not traveling to the totality band. I've seen many eclipse
pictures on TV and the Internet, and this time I was going to be there.
I figured that between NASA and my photographic friends, I'd have ample
opportunity to see good pictures. So I just took my one "contextual"
record shot of totality, and spent the rest of the time watching through
my binoculars. As we've both said, the experience was mind-blowing.
Traffic getting to our eclipse area was not a problem a day before, nor
was travelling at 3-5am from our hotel 85 miles away to the town in the
totality band. Traffic going home over 2 days was horrible. We hit a
backup at almost every populated place, adding 40-50% extra travel
time. Each time we encountered a delay, we just laughed and said,
"Yeah, but we saw the eclipse!"
--Peter
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Eclipse/
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Eclipse/>
>
>
> As a lifelong amateur astronomer and photographer, I sympathized with
Larry
> Z?s recent advice to forget about photographing the eclipse and just
watch
> it.
>
> As a lifelong amateur astronomer and photographer, I felt free to
ignore the
> advice!
>
> My son and I drove from Raleigh and Charlotte to the town of Murphy,
where
> the path of totality would cross the extreme SW corner of North
Carolina.
> Weather turned out better than predicted: Hardly a cloud to be seen,
and not
> one on the face of the Sun until 5 seconds after the Moon fully
departed it.
>
> To supplement the visual enjoyment, I brought my 100-mm binocular
telescope
> with eyepieces for 21x and metal-on-glass filters to go over the
objective
> lenses. These came off at totality for what turned out to be a
spectacular
> view of the Sun?s corona and numerous prominences rising up past the
> silhouette of the Moon. I also brought my Nikon D810A with an 80-400
Nikkor
> zoom equipped with a similar filter. I did experience some frustration
> trying to get good focus with the camera, and I wonder whether the
quality
> of the glass filter was not good enough to match the native
performance of
> the lens. There is a neutral-density glass filter with nearly the same
> optical density as this reflective filter, and I?m tempted to try it
just to
> see if I can get better detail on the Sun.
>
> In any case, the experience of watching a total eclipse of the Sun
was every
> bit as spectacular and ethereal as I?d hoped it would be. I?d seen
numerous
> partial eclipses, and I can tell you that no partial eclipse of less
than
> 99% or so prepares you for that happens as that last 1% disappears, and
> nothing at all about a partial eclipse even resembles the sight of
totality.
> During the partial phase there?s a dark bite out of the Sun in a
bright sky,
> but as the last sliver of Sun disappears, the level of illumination
drops
> precipitously and dramatically, and the winking out of the last
remnant is
> like?no, it?s NOT like anything else. The whole world goes dim, fast and
> shockingly. And whereas the partially eclipsed Sun of practically any
degree
> still looks like a brilliant spot too bright to look at in a blue
sky, the
> eclipsed Sun is totally different. There?s now a glowing nimbus
surrounding
> a terrifying black hole where the Sun used to be, none of which was
visible
> until totality. It?s other-worldly and sinister. We?re used to seeing
> nothing change in real time in the heavens, just slow day-to-day
changes and
> a constant, reliable Sun. In the last seconds before totality we see the
> actual movement of heavenly bodies and then the obscuration of the
Sun, and
> it?s too massive and overpowering and beyond human scale to
understand or
> tolerate with a placid mind. No wonder the ancients were terrified of
these
> things!
>
> I got a few good shots, and one bystander who asked if he could take a
> picture through the binoculars with his iPhone got a one-in-a-million
shot ?
> as well as proving that decent images of the event could be gotten
this way.
>
> ?howard
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