View Single Post
Old 09-18-2016, 07:59 PM   #17
Rich Z
Quote:
Originally Posted by DollysMom View Post
Still nice and you are ready for the August 2017 solar eclipse.
That was one of the reasons that I wanted this solar filter. I'm thinking that tracking the sun while the moon intersects it on video would be much more interesting than tracking the moon. So I needed a way to try to protect the camera from overheating with the sun shining directly down the lens barrel. As it is, that black camera body is still going to get quite hot in August afternoon sunlight.

I should get a nice view of the eclipse from my place, but heck, lots of thunderstorms come through here in the afternoon in August, so I'm not sure if I should try to hedge my bets by planning on being somewhere else. Problem is, the track doesn't seem to go through any desert parts (meaning areas of lesser likelihood of mid August afternoon clouds and rain) of the USA, so my trying to pull a fast one on Murphy's Law would likely just wind up blowing up in my face anyway. And, of course, trying to rely on any sort of weather forecast, even 24 hours in advance, would be a complete waste of time.

Anyway, maybe if there were a bunch of sunspots the photos would be more interesting. There does appear to be a very faint pair of them in the photos, but honestly, trying to focus on the sun was actually quite difficult. I had to try to catch the edge of the sun to get some contrast, but even that didn't work as well as I had hoped. You would think that just manually focusing on infinity would work, but evidently infinity is even further away from the camera than the sun is. Maybe Alpha Centauri?

Honestly, manual focus itself on the P900 is not that easy to do. The control isn't on the lens body. You have to first make a setting from the menu dial, and then use that same menu dial for the manual focus. Not at all intuitive to me, and a challenge to be precise with. Especially with the camera pointing almost straight upwards at the sun.

I guess getting images like this from an Earth based platform just isn't possible?