[Leica] Eclipse photos

[boulanger.croissant at gmail.com (Peter Klein)]

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