Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2017/08/29

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Subject: [Leica] Eclipse photos
From: mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2017 05:52:41 -0400
References: <B4F59B78-C14C-441E-AC2E-31AF2C8EE0A8@twc.com>

I enjoy Larry Z?s post and his intellect and interesting high tech 
experience but it seems whenever something goes up against photography, 
biking or astronomy, photography goes by the wayside.
A very cheap point and shoot he used on his very high tech bike if I recall.
Not everyone has to have photography as a serious hobby. There's no law.
People seem to  feel like they should act like its neck in neck with the 
rest of their life when it?s not even close.

 
 

-- 

Mark William Rabiner
Photographer

On 8/23/17, 2:38 AM, "LUG on behalf of Howard L Ritter Jr" 
<lug-bounces+mark=rabinergroup.com at leica-users.org on behalf of hlritter 
at twc.com> wrote:

    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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In reply to: Message from hlritter at twc.com (Howard L Ritter Jr) ([Leica] Eclipse photos)