After much lengthy and at times tedious processing, I am delighted (and relieved!) to present an animated view of November’s total solar eclipse as recorded from Brisbane. The plan was to take a frame every 2 minutes using the EOS Utility running on my Laptop, but a few communication and stability problems thwarted this, so not all the frames are evenly spaced. Towards the end of the eclipse, the PC battery died so I had to plug in a remote release and finish off the last 30 mins manually.
When the rig was running smoothly, I had time to experience the eerie darkness and the noticeable chill as the eclipse approach the 80% maximum, whereupon a flock of some 20-30 Black-winged Stilts took off, presumably heading home to roost, fooled by the unexpected appearance of the unusual twilight.
I was using the Canon Extender EF 2x II which allegedly should not autofocus at F11, so I did not switch the lens to MF but I think that the combination did autofocus, so some of the latter frames are a little soft where presumably the AF tried to latch onto the thin cloud that occasionally drifted across the FOV – I think that the AF confirmation bleep occasionally sounded on certain exposures, but I didn’t want to fiddle with the rig and settings!
In terms of processing, neither Images Plus nor Photoshop could align the individual frames due to their changing geometry aspect, so I had to align them manually in Photoshop, frame-by-frame, pixel-by-pixel (groan) where I only have the use of 3.16GB of RAM on my Win XP box, so I was continuously plagued by crashes and out of memory errors. Hence the long time between original capture and this final result! Must upgrade!
Equipment used:- Canon 5D Mk III, Canon 400mm F5.6L, Canon Extender EF 2x II, Vixen GP mount.
- 73 frames at 1/2000 sec, F11, ISO100, Full aperture Baader 3.8 Astrophotography Solar Film.
- 14th November 2012, 5:54am – 7:59am AEST (UT+10)
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia.
The Vixen GP mount was polar aligned using a compass for the Azimuth setting and a 360º protractor to set 27.5º for the Altitude setting. This kept the Sun in the frame with only the occasional need to re-centre over the 2 hour period.
The 1st frame remains static for 5 secs to provide equipment details.
WARNING: 5MB file:
Here is the link:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25149831/Sol...mation-600.gif
Cheers
Dennis