As I observed yesterday, the good news is that in Riverside the skies were perfectly clear there was practically nothing between us and the sun. The bad news is that there was very little between us and the sun. For the past seven years I've been planning on heading off to Texas this week to watch the eclipse with my sister, who lives about 120 miles from the center of totality. Between a huge crunch at work (it's a startup, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, Fred), and the iffy skies, I punted on the trip. After 2017, I bought myself an equatorial mount in December for this eclipse so that I wouldn't have to keep adjusting the camera every few minutes, and for the past four months have literally not had free time and clear skies to set it up and try it out. I didn't expend energy wrestling with it yesterday, just did the manual adjustment and my astrozap filter on my bigma. I ran into one weird technical issue in that it seemed like I couldn't open up the aperture of the bigma on the K-3 III beyond f/10 when on manual exposure. Long story short, it had to do with how it deals with bracketing. It wasn't a real problem because putting the bigma on the K-1 meant that I needed to readjust less often, even if I did lose a little bit of resolution at the pixel level. I also bobbled when I restarted the intervalometer at the peak of the eclipse and hit the single shot button rather than the start a series of shots button. Oops. Anyways, here are shots from yesterday, they definitely show the limitations of (gear * skill) product, but at least things are recognizable. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/albums/72177720316093621/ Processing the photos last night I was once again reminded of a lightroom feature that would be easy for them to implement and would be very helpful: Automatic cropping on things like the sun, moon, or a bird in an otherwise fairly empty sky. -- Larry Colen lrc@red4est.com sent from ret13est

Come on, Larry Not bad at all. There is even a sun spot visible near the centre. Pity you were unable to get to the path of totality. The only chance I had of totality was in 2002 but it turned out completely overcast which was a huge disappointment. We did experience the silence, cooling & darkness for a couple of minutes, mind you. I also remember a chap in a microlite flying around above the cloud base. Wonder what he saw? We will have another in SA in 2030 if I am fortunate enough to last that long. Alan C On 09-Apr-24 07:13 PM, Larry Colen wrote: > As I observed yesterday, the good news is that in Riverside the skies were perfectly clear there was practically nothing between us and the sun. The bad news is that there was very little between us and the sun. > > For the past seven years I've been planning on heading off to Texas this week to watch the eclipse with my sister, who lives about 120 miles from the center of totality. Between a huge crunch at work (it's a startup, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, Fred), and the iffy skies, I punted on the trip. > > After 2017, I bought myself an equatorial mount in December for this eclipse so that I wouldn't have to keep adjusting the camera every few minutes, and for the past four months have literally not had free time and clear skies to set it up and try it out. I didn't expend energy wrestling with it yesterday, just did the manual adjustment and my astrozap filter on my bigma. > > I ran into one weird technical issue in that it seemed like I couldn't open up the aperture of the bigma on the K-3 III beyond f/10 when on manual exposure. Long story short, it had to do with how it deals with bracketing. It wasn't a real problem because putting the bigma on the K-1 meant that I needed to readjust less often, even if I did lose a little bit of resolution at the pixel level. > > I also bobbled when I restarted the intervalometer at the peak of the eclipse and hit the single shot button rather than the start a series of shots button. Oops. > > Anyways, here are shots from yesterday, they definitely show the limitations of (gear * skill) product, but at least things are recognizable. > > https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/albums/72177720316093621/ > > Processing the photos last night I was once again reminded of a lightroom feature that would be easy for them to implement and would be very helpful: Automatic cropping on things like the sun, moon, or a bird in an otherwise fairly empty sky. > > > -- > Larry Colen > lrc@red4est.com sent from ret13est > > > > -- > %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List > To unsubscribe send an email topdml-leave@pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.

> On Apr 9, 2024, at 11:34 PM, Alan C <cole@lantic.net> wrote: > > Come on, Larry > > Not bad at all. There is even a sun spot visible near the centre. Thanks, I just added one from a little before peak that has both sunspots visible https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/53644345624/in/album-72177720316093621/ > Pity you were unable to get to the path of totality. If I'm lucky I'll be able to travel to more. Right about the time of my 85th birthday there will be one not far from where I live. > > The only chance I had of totality was in 2002 but it turned out completely overcast which was a huge disappointment. We did experience the silence, cooling & darkness for a couple of minutes, mind you. I also remember a chap in a microlite flying around above the cloud base. Wonder what he saw? We will have another in SA in 2030 if I am fortunate enough to last that long. That'll give you a reason to hang around then. :-) > > Alan C > > On 09-Apr-24 07:13 PM, Larry Colen wrote: >> As I observed yesterday, the good news is that in Riverside the skies were perfectly clear there was practically nothing between us and the sun. The bad news is that there was very little between us and the sun. >> >> For the past seven years I've been planning on heading off to Texas this week to watch the eclipse with my sister, who lives about 120 miles from the center of totality. Between a huge crunch at work (it's a startup, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, Fred), and the iffy skies, I punted on the trip. >> >> After 2017, I bought myself an equatorial mount in December for this eclipse so that I wouldn't have to keep adjusting the camera every few minutes, and for the past four months have literally not had free time and clear skies to set it up and try it out. I didn't expend energy wrestling with it yesterday, just did the manual adjustment and my astrozap filter on my bigma. >> >> I ran into one weird technical issue in that it seemed like I couldn't open up the aperture of the bigma on the K-3 III beyond f/10 when on manual exposure. Long story short, it had to do with how it deals with bracketing. It wasn't a real problem because putting the bigma on the K-1 meant that I needed to readjust less often, even if I did lose a little bit of resolution at the pixel level. >> >> I also bobbled when I restarted the intervalometer at the peak of the eclipse and hit the single shot button rather than the start a series of shots button. Oops. >> >> Anyways, here are shots from yesterday, they definitely show the limitations of (gear * skill) product, but at least things are recognizable. >> >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/albums/72177720316093621/ >> >> Processing the photos last night I was once again reminded of a lightroom feature that would be easy for them to implement and would be very helpful: Automatic cropping on things like the sun, moon, or a bird in an otherwise fairly empty sky. >> >> >> -- >> Larry Colen >> lrc@red4est.com sent from ret13est >> >> >> >> -- >> %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> To unsubscribe send an email topdml-leave@pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. > -- > %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List > To unsubscribe send an email to pdml-leave@pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. > -- Larry Colen lrc@red4est.com. sent from Mirkwood