Ausalba
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Make light while the Sun shines

22/9/2011

 
The little package of bits arrived a few days ago from the lovely people in Hong Kong. I wasted little time in attaching this to that, that to the other, and generally hooking up whatever I could lay hands on. The Tamron and Orestegor lenses can now serve time on the 30D instead of my FD-mount Canons, the old Sigma mirror lens that I nearly sold last year can come back out of its hiding place (and may see light on December's lunar eclipse), and the intervalometer was duly tested... on nothing particularly worthwhile. I waited until today though, to hook the camera up to the Zeiss, helping me to shoot a few sunspots.
Picture
The drawback of the APS-C format is that I can't fit the full solar disk in a single exposure. Still, the best of the action was in this part :) If I do want a full disk - as I will at times for both Sun and Moon - I'll need to do a stitch-up; not difficult in itelf, but not ideal in shooting terms.

This was a1/2000 sec exposure, at ISO 100, with a solar filter over the objective. Many exposures were made, but only one was reasonably sharp - the rest were variously affected by wobbly seeing. Here, a spot group is heading for the limb; some bright faculae can also be seen. Below is a detail of the spots. Because of the solar filter, the original image is coloured orange, but for this image I used just the green channel (for best definition) and colourized the image for a more natural tone. It is entirely artificial though.

Picture
It became apparent, while testing the interval timer, that the camera battery was past its best. One run last night, shooting time-lapse star trails, petered out after 17 shots. With little hope of a favourable reply, I emailed the retailer to see if the battery was included in the warranty - it was. They will post a replacement, and I can keep the current one, which will be at least be an emergency spare. I suspect though, that for long exposures I might be better off with a mains supply or a larger battery pack. I'll see how I get on with the new battery first.


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    Author

    I take photographs, sometimes with obsolete technology. I look at the night sky. I drink coffee, and whisky (Scotch, or possibly Irish). I read and sometimes write. I Tweet, occasionally (@ozalba). I might ruminate and fulminate from time to time.

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