Venus Transit Sucker Hole Shots

[sheeny]

Well... I think this is the result of plan G... or is H?:P

Miserable weather here. Cloud, wind, rain, cold... (snow yesterday and last night).

I managed to capture this through a sucker hole as the clouds scudded past. I took a heap of shots, but this is the best. A couple of my shots I took though misty rain:lol:... that's Oberon weather for you. I was cowering under the verandah out the back shooting under the eaves.

Definitely the most difficult imaging conditions I think I've tried to work under. Unrehearsed method (it wasn't till last weekend that I hatched the standby, reserve, back-up plan of making a solar filter for the 300mm lens on the Oly E510 in case I had to travel). I had no decent weather to trial it. I had to give up on live view even with a shroud over me. Manual focus through the viewfinder only!:eyepop: Outsmarted myself on aperture mode - of course that's going to overexpose!:rolleyes: I ended up using a shotgun approach to bracketing:lol: trying to chase varying brightness through differing thicknesses of cloud... the phrase "out of control" springs to mind:lol:.

I'm sure others are also tragic enough to have taken some mediocre sucker hole shots on such an occasion, so lets see 'em! :D

Al.

[matt42s]

taken through the only 60 second sucker hole today, from Gerringong, 90 min south of Sydney.
http://mattsinclair.com/photograph/transit_of_venus-0001.jpg

[Poita]

I posted my cloudy shots already :D
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=91865

Similar story here, focusing via viewfinder from the verandah out the front, except I was making my filter at 3am this morning!

[austinstkong]

Haha same story here: Waited for a sucker hole, then set the exposure on the camera and took a shot. It looked dark, so I increased it a couple notchs and it came out overexposed so i turned it back down a bit and it came out dark :screwy:, so I turned it back up and it was overexposed again :confused2:
This happened quite a few times and thought I my camera might be broken (I took the filter off briefly while the camera was attached and was pointed at the sun), and took quite a while before I realised that the clouds have been playing me and I facepalmed my self:rofl:

[Becstar]

Awesome stuff!

[alan meehan]

Good shot AL,snow i thought we had it bad
AL

[Paul Haese]

Not bad Al.

[midnight]

I think you've done well Al considering.

Nice contrast with some lovelly solar feature too.

Darrin...

[sheeny]

Thanks guys. I'm quite happy with it for a single frame - especially given the conditions.

Al.

[Deeno]

Pretty damn good Al!

Got up early and it was pretty obvious I wasn't going to set up a scope!
So the 6 inch Orion solar filter was 'hung' off the hood of the 80-200 telephoto with the aid of some velcro tape.

First opportunity arrived around 11 ish and lasted an odd 3 minutes before a mad dash (splash..) back indoors.

Had a good run around 2 ish. Like you, guessed an approximate setting and ran bracketed shots.

Still have wet feet and its raining again!

[pixelsaurus]

Got the transit and the hole. :D