Egg Born Son
Veteran
Photos follow after a bit of a story:
Today between 1.17pm and 3.59pm local time there was a rare event known as an annular eclipse, an event that I read occurs only once every 73 years. I only found out about it last night and packed my work van with my cameras (GH2, HVX), tripods and accessories intending to set up wherever I happened to find myself when it started. After a team brief in the morning held at our new base of operations at the Gnangara satellite farm I was inspired to return there in the afternoon to set up and get some cool foregrounds. Luckily my boss agreed to let me take a very long lunch to take the photos and work back to make up the time. He is always trying to get us to submit photos for the internal newsletter so that helped to sell him on it.
As I left the job I was working on, the sky went from blue with a few wispy clouds to 100% cloud cover with thick dark storm clouds completely obscuring the sun. As I drove half an hour to the satellite farm my heart sunk. It was already as dark as a total eclipse and I couldn't even see the sun through the clouds. Disaster! Hoping against hope I kept driving, the eclipse would be almost 2 hours - given I was going to have to work late surely the photo gods would grant me at least one break in the clouds!
On arrival high contrast shadows of trees suddenly appeared on the ground. Elation! But by the time I had parked no trace of that break in the clouds remained. And it would be half an hour into the eclipse before I got my next break. So I got myself set up underneath the back door of my van (expecting rain any minute) and prayed to any god that would listen to open the skies for business.
I ran into a few problems of course. A few gear problems: battery change after realising I hadn't turned things off after diligently charging and testing batteries the night before (lucky I had spares), I set out my IR filter but didn't put it in my bag (damn it, I'd hoped to look through the clouds with that), and forgot a crucial 62-72mm adapter ring that meant I couldn't put the big stopper on my 200mm lens. And unfortunately 200mm is the longest lens I had and couldn't use it on the GH2 now to get 400mm. So I put my gear together as best I could 200mm on the HVX (using internal ND) and only 135mm on the GH2. Then the sun finally poked through the clouds.
Now to the photos. I ran into some problems but it worked out in the end. It is only the second time I've used the GH2 and the menus just about killed me. I ended up pretty much just letting it make all the decisions for me before I lost the eclipse altogether. Using manual lenses meant I chose the focus (infinity, duh) and other than experimenting with a couple of different ISO settings I threw on an 8.5 stop ND and let the camera take care of exposure. I used default C2 and C3 settings, I don't know what they are but it worked out once I finally found the Shoot w/out lens menu option (a setting which frustratingly reset itself every time I turned the camera off).
The second set of problems were related to the time of day. The sun is pretty much at it's highest point between 1 and 2pm so my great of idea of using the satellite dishes in the foreground became nigh impossible to frame, especially on the long lens. So I got pretty much underneath for the shots that feature them and couldn't get more than one in at a time. And there was really only 2 dishes big enough to make it work. I had to use wider lenses to get framing that included the sun and the dish. I used 28mm, 85mm and 135mm Nikon Ai-s on the photos with the GH2 with only the single ND filter. Not sure what I used on which photo but I used f-stops between f2 and f11 througout the hour and a half I was shooting.
In view of the difficulty getting foregrounds into the photo, in the end the bad weather made for much more interesting photos. It was the middle of the day and the difficulty exposing for the massive contrast between the dark clouds and bright sun made for some seriously dramatic photos. Coupled with the fact the sun looks like the moon due to the eclipse it is very hard to see these as daytime photos but I assure you this was the middle of the day! In all I took about 200 photos in the 20-30 minutes the sun was visible and these are the best of them. They are untouched, straight out of the camera. The only post done to them is compression for upload. The moon passed across the top half of the sun with maximum coverage reaching 59%.
Without more ado - the photos:
Today between 1.17pm and 3.59pm local time there was a rare event known as an annular eclipse, an event that I read occurs only once every 73 years. I only found out about it last night and packed my work van with my cameras (GH2, HVX), tripods and accessories intending to set up wherever I happened to find myself when it started. After a team brief in the morning held at our new base of operations at the Gnangara satellite farm I was inspired to return there in the afternoon to set up and get some cool foregrounds. Luckily my boss agreed to let me take a very long lunch to take the photos and work back to make up the time. He is always trying to get us to submit photos for the internal newsletter so that helped to sell him on it.
As I left the job I was working on, the sky went from blue with a few wispy clouds to 100% cloud cover with thick dark storm clouds completely obscuring the sun. As I drove half an hour to the satellite farm my heart sunk. It was already as dark as a total eclipse and I couldn't even see the sun through the clouds. Disaster! Hoping against hope I kept driving, the eclipse would be almost 2 hours - given I was going to have to work late surely the photo gods would grant me at least one break in the clouds!
On arrival high contrast shadows of trees suddenly appeared on the ground. Elation! But by the time I had parked no trace of that break in the clouds remained. And it would be half an hour into the eclipse before I got my next break. So I got myself set up underneath the back door of my van (expecting rain any minute) and prayed to any god that would listen to open the skies for business.
I ran into a few problems of course. A few gear problems: battery change after realising I hadn't turned things off after diligently charging and testing batteries the night before (lucky I had spares), I set out my IR filter but didn't put it in my bag (damn it, I'd hoped to look through the clouds with that), and forgot a crucial 62-72mm adapter ring that meant I couldn't put the big stopper on my 200mm lens. And unfortunately 200mm is the longest lens I had and couldn't use it on the GH2 now to get 400mm. So I put my gear together as best I could 200mm on the HVX (using internal ND) and only 135mm on the GH2. Then the sun finally poked through the clouds.
Now to the photos. I ran into some problems but it worked out in the end. It is only the second time I've used the GH2 and the menus just about killed me. I ended up pretty much just letting it make all the decisions for me before I lost the eclipse altogether. Using manual lenses meant I chose the focus (infinity, duh) and other than experimenting with a couple of different ISO settings I threw on an 8.5 stop ND and let the camera take care of exposure. I used default C2 and C3 settings, I don't know what they are but it worked out once I finally found the Shoot w/out lens menu option (a setting which frustratingly reset itself every time I turned the camera off).
The second set of problems were related to the time of day. The sun is pretty much at it's highest point between 1 and 2pm so my great of idea of using the satellite dishes in the foreground became nigh impossible to frame, especially on the long lens. So I got pretty much underneath for the shots that feature them and couldn't get more than one in at a time. And there was really only 2 dishes big enough to make it work. I had to use wider lenses to get framing that included the sun and the dish. I used 28mm, 85mm and 135mm Nikon Ai-s on the photos with the GH2 with only the single ND filter. Not sure what I used on which photo but I used f-stops between f2 and f11 througout the hour and a half I was shooting.
In view of the difficulty getting foregrounds into the photo, in the end the bad weather made for much more interesting photos. It was the middle of the day and the difficulty exposing for the massive contrast between the dark clouds and bright sun made for some seriously dramatic photos. Coupled with the fact the sun looks like the moon due to the eclipse it is very hard to see these as daytime photos but I assure you this was the middle of the day! In all I took about 200 photos in the 20-30 minutes the sun was visible and these are the best of them. They are untouched, straight out of the camera. The only post done to them is compression for upload. The moon passed across the top half of the sun with maximum coverage reaching 59%.
Without more ado - the photos:
