elliott937 wrote:
I'm prepared to spend most of the day, August 21, on the campus of a private school, way out in the fields. It'll be the perfect place, and solid in the Totality Zone. Why am I telling you this?
I thought I should do some practice right here in my own side yard. With my Canon on a great tripod, and with the 77mm Thousand Oaks eclipse filter in front of the 800mm worth of lens. I found the sun, a small orange ball, on my first try this morning. I even photographed it. So I felt I should practice some more. I went out a second time, around 1:15PM, that will be our time slot for totality a week from Monday. Under a bright sun, I tried for almost an hour and I absolutely could not find the sun. I so wanted to look up the "line of the lens", which, of course, I cannot do.
So I just continued to try to find the sun. Remember the Thousand Oaks filter drops the light just about 100,000 times, leaving me almost nothing left.
Sorry, I know I probably sound like I'm complaining. I'll be practicing tomorrow and the next day, until I can acquire a "trick" in finding something when looking at a very Very black field. Soooo, my friends, has anyone acquired any tricks on finding the sun through the eclipse filter at the end of your camera lens? Oh, in case you were wondering how strong should you lens be, my 800mm of lens acquired a very small image, that is, when I lucked out on the first attempt and actually found the sun.
Any hints, anyone has, send them our way. And thanks in advance.
I'm prepared to spend most of the day, August 21, ... (
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I use a Sol-Searcher by Tele Vue; I have it mounted in an adapter on the camera hot shoe. I line it up starting with a wide angle lens that can easily find the sun, then mount the telephoto lens and fine-tune alignment.
If your lens is a zoom, zoom out and find the sun at wide angle. You can get the lens pointed toward the sun by looking at the shadow of the lens on the ground; might help if you use a sheet of cardboard on the ground tilted up to be perpendicular to the sun.
If your lens doesn't zoom out enough, then use a wider lens to get aligned. This will typically mean mounting the camera rather than the lens, so attach a QR plate to the camera that works and align it with the QR plate on the lens.