Lunar and Astro Photography (8)

Side by side comparison from the two lenses .
Hand held , Image stabilisation on .
With the 500 Reflex that's inbody only , with the 200-600mm that's a combined lens and body I/S .
Not a lot of sun spot activity today compared to a week back .


The Sun with Sony 200-600mm by Neil , on Flickr


The Sun with Minolta 500mm Reflex by Neil , on Flickr

Howard_S wrote: Well, well ... I never knew the lens hood bit of the 500 came off! What is the thread there? It's not marked on the barrel. I thought the solution was to drop a filter in the slot at the body-end of the lens. Now I inspect it I see that it is an ND x4 filter integrated with the holder. That won't work with the sun, I expect!

The front filter is a standard 82mm filter thread , handy if you want to upgrade the hood for one that does something.
The rear filter should be the clear one , I've never needed the ND4 one myself.
If you haven't got the clear one , you can take the ND one out and cover the hole up with some insulation tape to keep the light and dust out .
That'll keep your shutter speed up .

The ND filter supplied is of no use for photographing the sun , you'd burn your sensor out , or you retina with a dslr !
The solar filters are very different.
To look at them , they look like a peice of tinfoil , rather than dark glass .

Hopefully next Monday we might catch the tail end of the solar eclipse.
If the sky's clear I'm heading up to the pennines to try and get a shot .
I need to be further to the west really , but you never know .
As I'll be focusing on the sun , I'll have the solar filter fitted .

Just don't burn a hole threw the back of the camera !!

The odds of catching that image again are astronomical !

I've seen this shot against the Moon , which also look good . Better really , but fairly common . As said , not so common with film .

Incidentally , you'll notice the size telescope he used to fill the frame and I forgot to mention my images of the Sun above are very heavily cropped .
I haven't taken a shot of the Sun with my reflector telescope , but I've have done the moon and filled the frame .
It was a half moon and filled the frame of an APS-C camera ( a580) so a full moon would fill a full frame sensor or film .

I'll take some shots of the Sun with my telescope at some point , probably on film too , to see how they come out . I doubt I'll get the ISS in it though !

I think this was from when I first bought this telescope about fourteen years ago .
I'd picked it up from the shop on my way over to my friends , calumniated the mirrors , and set it up ready for it to go dark .
I used my Sony and she used her Nikon attached via "T" mount adapters .
She thought the telescope was moving and needed tightening up as the Moon kept dropping out of sight , I explained as the Earths spinning and the Moons moving in orbit , at these magnifications , it does shift some .
Keeping up with the Sun would be awkward without a tracking mount .

A bit more impressive than my 500mm lens shots , 750mm reflector with a 2X Barlow giving an effective focal length of 1500mm in 35mm film terms ( effectively 2250mm on an APS-C sensor ! ) .
I'djust picked up a ( then ) new telescope , a 750mm reflector with a primary mirror of 150mm diameter which gives an effective aperture of f/5 .
Quite big , for a camera .


half moon , un-cropped. by Neil , on Flickr

The April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse seen in North Texas.

#1 13:46:45


#2 13:47:42

Sony A7R4, Tamrn 50-400

these are brilliant, Mariusz

Stunning images, Mariusz - congrats for pulling them off!

Moon and few thin clouds

α1 + Sony FE 5.6-6.3/200-600 G OSS @ 600 mm, f/6.3, 1/400 s, ISO 12800