I just got home a few minutes ago - long enough to unload the car & start the first card downloading.
I had a list of about a dozen locations I was checking weather - from Charleston, SC to Lick Creek, IL. Forecasts ranged from "Mostly Cloudy" in Charleston to Mostly Sunny in Robbinsville, NC. But on Friday, Hopkinsville,KY changed from "Mostly Sunny" to "Sunny", and then on Saturday changed again to "Extra Sunny". Destination dilemma solved. Forty-seven hours; 1,228 miles round trip. Rested at the Kentucky welcome center on I-24 for a couple of hours early Monday Morning before driving on to Hopkinsville. Weather as advertised. Someone mentioned they'd heard on the radio that Hopkinsville had the best weather of anywhere east of the Mississippi. Approximately four hours on site. Plenty of time to set up equipment & program my intervalometers. Set them to trip for 1 sec every 35 seconds. The K-1/K-3 manuals are particularly unhelpful for figuring out what the display was actually telling me about the ISO in Tav mode. The instantaneous display after it took a photo looked good on the little TV on the back, but I didn't want to try to zoom in & really look at it for fear I'd screw things up and not get any photos. The intervalometers worked great. I was able to monitor them without taking too much time away from watching the eclipse. I took my filters off as soon as it reached totality & used manual shutter release on both cameras without having to take my eyes off the sky. As soon as I saw the diamond ring beginning at the trailing edge, I took one last frame with each camera & let it go back to running on the timers while remounting the filters. I'm glad I shopped for the filters early so I could get the right size. They slipped on easily; stayed secure while mounted, but came off without disturbing the cameras when the time came & then went back on just as easily. Because of the high angle I had trouble aiming the cameras initially. Once I got them aimed it took me a few tries to figure out how to keep them aimed. I eventually settled on just nudging the tripod legs around to keep the sun centered in the display. I used Live View the whole time. The K-1's articulated screen was great. If I live long enough for the 2024 eclipse, I'm getting one of those sky tracking mounts that will hold two cameras. The K-3 got down to showing only 1/3 battery, but I was ready with a freshly charged battery. Didn't miss a beat. Slipped the tray out of the Battery grip during the interval & slipped the new battery in. Trip back was a bit more stressful because I was more tired when I started. Napped at rest areas (about 5 hrs combined sleep) once I hit NC. -- Science - Questions we may never find answers for. Religion - Answers we must never question. -- 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.
