Eclipse lens

Arrived yesterday!

Here is the first photo I took:



It's a streetlight at the end of the street. Looked almost the size of the moon. Handheld (sorry for blur)

And kust a few moments ago...



High in the sky (sets at 11:30). Again, hand held and probably poorly focussed. This is a full frame.

It's an 800mm f/8 with a 1.4x teleconverter on a sensor with a 1.4x factor, so equivalent of a 1600mm f/11

 

I have a solar filter for a telescope. It has a 100mm aperture and an overall outer diameter of 150mm. The lens takes a roughly 105mm filter, but the front element is closer to 100mm.

It's labelled SWSUN120. I also have another smaller one (SWSUN-M102) with a paper mache adapter for my 70-200 lens.

You will see the marvels of paper mache adapters when I see you. (Perhaps I'll take a photo just for the amusement of others here)

 

With a little tweaking of my eyes (adding focus to them) I have these from this morning.





First one was with the 1.4x teleconverter, second was without

 

And with the 2x teleconverter, the moon and the sun are full frame

Focussing is a bitch though -- especially on the sun





Obviously I won't be using the 2x for the actual eclipse.

 

OK, happy with the detail (if not the actual exposure) of the images

 

Here are some pictures of my camera, lens, solar filter, and paper mache adapter!



I didn't spend three years in kindergarten for nothing.





These pictures show the 1.4x teleconverter mounted behind the lens as well.

I've just completed a hot-shoe mounted paper mache pinhole camera to allow me to find the sun more easily.

Remarkably tough stuff this paper and PVA glue.

 

Not bad for a beginner

 

Wow! Cairns has true north 7.1° west of magnetic north!

 

Looks like it will pay to start out *very* early on the 14th.

What are you planning to do to time when to put the filters back on before the third contact?

It's obviously not good to keep them off too long.

 

Just for amusement, here is the hot-shoe mounted pinhole spotting scope.



And that's the mirror lens with only half of the paper mache adapter in place. No teleconverter is fitted.

A second picture shows the magnificent lens on the spotting scope.

 

Oh I wish I had a hydrogen line filter. *sigh*

Triple checking my exposures right now.

Here's the result of what I call a "good" exposure.



That's a full frame with 2.8x converters on 800mm lens with 1.6 mag factor. So equivalent of 3.5 metre focal length on 35mm And it's only f/22.

*And* I'm getting better at focussing the damn thing.

A little concerned that with the sun so low I'm going to have to adjust exposure significantly. I'm going to bracket for maybe 3 more stops of exposure in 1 stop increments.

I also "calibrated" my spotting scope I can find the sun with the longest lens in pretty short order.

I'm so glad I attended kindergarten!

 

Yeah, those images were processed a bit. The original image looks like this:



ISO 200 2400mm f/22 1/60 sec

I'm just using the software that comes with the camera. It's actually pretty good at doing "all over" adjustments and works with the raw files.

I do have an old copy of Photoshop 5.5, but that pre-dates raw files I think I can do some final stuff in that if I feel like it, but for getting an idea of the best exposure, this works fine.

1 stop more than this is too much, 1 stop less is OK. So I'm using the most exposure that works

Maybe I should take a look at them...