WAITING FOR THE SHADOW

SOLAR AND LUNAR ECLIPSE OBSERVING

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ASE 1994 Niagara Falls and TSE1994 in Bolivia
I started with a couple of flimsy tripods and a pair of 8x25mm binoculars..  I had a light weight Slik tripod but I used it from ground level with legs collapsed for extra stability.  On the Slik I mounted a 200mm lens with 2x converter(seen in picture below). For my other tripod,  I simply had 3 pieces of aluminium angle which I bolted together to make a cheap tripod to support a wide angle time lapse camera - a 120 format folding camera for multiple exposure time lapse images. I buried half of each leg in the sand for stability.  It was small but very strong.  It's the little object in shadow behind the tripod in this photo by Elaine Piini Wells taken on the Bolivian Altiplano. Back in La Paz, I gave the aluminium angle tripod to a pauper collecting aluminium cans for recycling.  
 
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Read about this eclipse  :  http://joe-cali.com/eclipses/PAST/TSE1994/tse941103.html


ASE 1999 Geraldton Australia and TSE1999 ROMANIA
I began using my Pentax 500mmf4.5 telephoto lens for eclipse photography.  I owned and used this lens for 12 years for wildlife before using it for eclipse work.  I never considered flying overseas or across Australia with it until these eclipses.  It was a 1970's designed and built lens. Pretty good for its day but nothing like todays APO lenses. It's ok for wildlife but basically too much glass, too much flare for eclipses.  It gave acceptable but not fantastic results.



Annular eclipse photo, Geraldton, Feb 16 1999.  Pentax 500 f4.5, Kodak ND4 filter
In Geraldton, I mounted the 500mm lens on a Manfrotto 090 tripod. This was barely strong enough.  Later that year in Romania, I mounted a large ball and socket on an equatorial wedge to make myself a push polar mount for that lens.  During that eclipse, I was very sick with a virus - fever of 39.5C so I didn't take many photos and the ones I did take were not very good. The virus lasted exactly 24 hrs and I was at my sickest during the eclipse.  
 
Read more :
Annular 1999
 http://joe-cali.com/eclipses/PAST/TSE_ASE1999/ase990216_0.html

Total 1999
http://joe-cali.com/eclipses/PAST/TSE_ASE1999/tse990811.html

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