PIXelations

Jayne and I were lucky to have scheduled our recent vacation in time to see the May 20th annular eclipse in Santa Fe. I didn’t know about it at the time we scheduled our trip. Then about three weeks before we left, I learned about the event.

At that time, I also learned about how to protect a camera lens using Astrozap Baader Astrosolar Safety Film. I also found this article How to make an eclipse filter.

In searching the internet for locations, I saw that Albuquerque was hosting major viewing parties, but I also thought that Santa Fe would do something. I also read that someone thought that St. John's College might be doing something. So, Jayne and I went to the college and sure enough, the Science department had a gathering atop the roof of the Evans Science Lab. They handed out free viewing glasses too! So I set up my tripod, my Canon 1D III with 100-400mm with a 1.4 extender. I also brought my laptop which I used to take a few picture, load to my laptop and view with Lightroom to tweak my settings.

I ended up using f11 at iso100 at 1/100sec with my camera in manual mode. I set my lens to manual and set it at infinity. I also had my lens in stabilization mode since even with a cable release, the mirror slap was blurring some of the pictures. I was too chicken to use mirror lockup.

The scene atop the roof was much like the scene in the movie “Independence Day” when alot of people tried to great the aliens atop some high rise building!

So, here are a couple of samples.





You can see the rest of this gallery here. Enjoy!