Are you going to see the eclipse in August?

DWThomas said:

... I believe the 2024 path starts up around Montreal ...

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That may be end of the path. The first city to get the 2024 eclipse is Mazatlán (four minutes). Never to early to plan your tropical vacation now.

I drove from Columbus, Ohio, down to a state park just outside of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. It turned out to be a beautiful day - just a few high wispy clouds. Given my lack of both proper equipment and the skill needed to get decent photographs of an eclipse, I decided that I would just soak in the experience instead of trying to photograph the event. We had two-and-a-half minutes of totality - I gave myself 15 seconds of that time to take a few shots on film with my FE2. I haven't had time to develop and print anything yet, so I don't know what, if anything, I captured. But it was an amazing experience - I took off the eclipse glasses when totality began and felt like I was on an alien planet. And the light the first few seconds after totality ended was some of the strangest I had even seen. Already looking forward to 2024.

BayG75 said:

... But it was an amazing experience - I took off the eclipse glasses when totality began and felt like I was on an alien planet. ...

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Exactly. We live our whole lives seeing night and day and all sorts of weather and we become accustomed to it, but when you see that black lunar disc and the streaming white corona against that deep blue sky, it provides a serious change in perspective: that we really are living on this little sphere in the universe.

Stunning photos, DWThomas.

Kevin Caulfield said:

Stunning photos, DWThomas.

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Thank you! I have finally put most of them up in my Pbase gallery. Considering there is no practice, and no retries -- and the whole 2+ hours could have been buried behind clouds -- I am pretty happy with the results. So now I have some data points and ideas for 2024 -- if I'm still on the green side of the dirt!

DWThomas said:

Thank you! I have finally put most of them up in my Pbase gallery. Considering there is no practice, and no retries -- and the whole 2+ hours could have been buried behind clouds -- I am pretty happy with the results. So now I have some data points and ideas for 2024 -- if I'm still on the green side of the dirt!

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Nice, I like it.

I shot at Casper Wy, this is shot with my Sony A700 and Tonkia 400 5.7 with Solar filter, need to scan the Ektar 100 shots taken with my Minolta 9.

Late to the game but I got my shot developed and scanned. I used this loaded with Shanghai GP3.



Set up at f/22 and opened up to bulb. Threw a towel over it and pulled it off for 10 seconds every 10 minutes.


I developed in Rodinal 1:25. Got some odd ball reflections that I left in for APUG. I messed up positioning so I got about half of the series. I know better for next time. I'm happy with the results.

Despite what I've said elsewhere, the Exakta lens I used was a 58/2 CZJ Biotar, not a 50/2.8 CZJ Tessar:

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Both the 50/2.8 and 58/2 lenses have surprised me with their sharpness and contrast.

During the eclipse, I quickly made just two photos with the Exakta and had my phone's video running somewhat unattended from 3 minutes prior to 3 minutes after the eclipse.

Here is a low quality phone-photo of the print from the Exakta. The print itself is nice and actually is very sharp, but I have no way of scanning it. The sky is actually a deep twilight-like blue and the corona is bright white.