Chiming in late here. Just realised that mail-archive.com is making a duplicate archive of our proceedings, but without the bandwidth restriction. The front element of the K-500 is pretty big, so buying a filter for it will be very expensive. IIRC, there's no filter tray on the lens, but possible to screw the lens apart just behind the focusing ring. It's been a few years since I sold mine so my memory is a little hazy on the details, but do have a look. If a filter can be fitted inside it could save you a bit of fuss.
One source of filters (in the US) is here: http://thousandoaksoptical.com/solar.html I think 500mm will serve you good for the Venus transit. The transit back in 2004 happened when Adelheid and I were touring the Atlantic coast after GFM, and I got a few shots using fog rolling off the ocean as a natural filter, just after sunrise when the sun was still low above the horizon. I used the FA*400/5.6. To give you an idea of the crop, here's one that made it into the PPG: http://pentaxphotogallery.com/photos/share/239422 Fingers crossed for good weather... :-) Jostein John Celio wrote: > I want to try photographing the transit of Venus across the sun on > June 5th, but I've never tried shooting the sun before. Any of you > guys have tips you can share? Is there a special filter I should use, > or would a polarizer or ND filter be sufficient? I'm planning on using > my K 500mm f4.5, so I'll probably need to special order a large enough > filter, and I'll need to do that soon. > Thanks, > John -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
