I shot a total eclipse in Estevan in around 1978, and spent some time making sure I wasn't going to trash my camera. The longest lens I has was a 200mm, I would have liked a 300. I think a 400 would have been too much. I guess these days there are zooms, but they were rare and crappy at that time.
Anyway, the wisdom back then was to keep your mirror down except during exposure because of the possibility of cutting the curtain. Mostly it was cloth shutters and I had an F2 which was titanium foil. I think now the shutters are all made of some sort of plastic. I don't know if they will take that sort of heat or not. I had a mylar filter in a card that the local astronomy club said was safe to view the sun with, so I held it over the front of the lens for composing, and then took my eye away from the viewfinder and the filter away from the lens to take pictures. Once totality was achieved, the filter wasn't needed. I think we were right in the middle of the shadow for that one. The totality seemed to go on forever. Bill On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 5:37 PM Zos Xavius <[email protected]> wrote: > Don't use Live View with just the lens and no filter. You will > probably nuke your sensor. If you have to tape some welder's glass > over your lens, but that may block too much light for fast exposures. > Mirror up is probably fine due to the short exposures involved but you > still have to compose somehow. You are basically turning your camera > into a giant magnifying glass pointed at the sun. Something to think > about. I would try to reduce the amount of light somehow given the > magnification involved. You are going to likely need to use live view > to get the best focus result. Your shutter speeds should be relatively > fast even with a good ND filter so I wouldn't worry about mirror up so > much. I would set it up in live view and then trigger with a remote. > As long as you stay in live view the mirror will be locked up and you > shouldn't get a lot of shake other than the shutter. > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
