Annular Eclipse May 20,2012

[Kayaker72]

Nice shots Bob. I am away right now so it may be a bit before I load mine up. The Baader film and homemade filter worked great (could make out sun spots). Just saying if any of you are interested in the transect of Venus over the sun on June 5. (www.astro-physics.com)

So after all the effort in buying the Baader film, making the filter, etc, a friend shows me a shot last night he took walking down the sidewalk with an iPhone. The leaves of a tree were acting like multiple pine hole cameras and he could see all these images of the eclipse on the ground. Great shot.

[erno james]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ernogy/...in/photostream

Annular eclipse 05/20/2012
Experiencing this spectacle made the long afternoon drive from Folsom to Chico, CA all the worthwhile for 4 little minutes of glory. Talk about challenging...having absolutely no knowledge on how to shoot a solar eclipse, I "Googled" like crazy but never really found the magic formula. I rented a 2x Canon extender, screwed on my 10 stop B+W ND filter, set my camera to Live-View, and hoped for the best. I tried finding anything for a foreground but this turned out to be nearly impossible as the sun was far too high in the sky. I found some trees and somewhat blindly included some of the upper branches in frame. As far as that nasty lens flare ring? $5 to anyone who can clean it up. I think I'm too lazy from the drive home tonight!

[ahab1372]

Since the lens flare ring nicely encircles the tree, why not call it "intentional"?

[Kayaker72]

Great shot Enro. Love the color. One thing on mine is that they are pretty white.

[erno james]

your's is probably white because you know what you're doing! i am just winging it. i do notice a red/purple cast with the B+W 10stop and i really didnt play around with the white balance much in post (Aperture 3). i am just surprised how dark the images were. my shot of duplicating the tree in silhouette was too challenging given the huge contrast with an overhead eclipsed sun. i tried shooting in manual for better control of the metering but ended up shooting in both manual and aperture priority during the 4 minutes of annularity.

i cant wait to see your shots kayaker! bob, strong celestial images sir!

[Kayaker72]

Just got back yesterday. Below are a few from the eclipse. I am still processing most of the photos. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

All shots were through Baader film.

This is a shot taken testing out my homemade filter of Baader film the day before. The black specs are sun spots.

small-4643 by kayaker72, on Flickr

At the start of the eclipse:


small-4657 by kayaker72, on Flickr

I was far enough south that I never got to see the "ring of fire." This is the closest I came (color added in post):

small-4707 by kayaker72, on Flickr


small-4720 by kayaker72, on Flickr

In addition to making a filter for the front of my 100-400L with the Baader film, I made a couple of hand held filters that got past around:

small-4736 by kayaker72, on Flickr

I am still processing most of my photos (snapped ~130). There seems to be a texture to the edges of some. At the time, I thought it was natural, looking at it on my monitor, it may be the Baader film showing up if my focus is off. I will play around with that some more before the Transit of Venus (June 5-6), but it definitely doesn't appear in several of the shots with better focus (#1).

But, overall, it was a lot of fun.

Thanks for viewing...Brant