Anyone contemplating shooting Venus

[Serge]

Here is a repost from our internal mail;


For those of you under rocks or out of range, Venus will begin it's first solar transit in 130 years - in just under an hour from now.
Don't go look at it. Save your eyes and watch the stream from CSIRO.

It's at http://www.transit.csiro.au/


Of course most of you are northern hemisphere, so it could be night there then.

[Serge]

POSTSCRIPT:

Just saw it a while ago, don't get excited.
Our Cine boys set up an Arriflex 16mm camera with a Canon 800mm + 2x TC,
looking through the viewfinder through an 16x ND, it looked like a large orange disk with a smallish dark dot just inside the rim of the sun.
Could have been one of our familiar dust bunnies really :(


How the ancients knew about all this, I'll never know :confused:

[Andre]

Yeah, I gave it a shot. Real hard to focus on the sun looking into the Sigma 50-500.

This was at F/38, 1/4000, with my fingers in front of the lens to filter out some of the light.
(edit: it was also through a dirty window with the blinds half closed).

Not at all sharp, but at least I got to see it.

Andre

[Andre]

Another, enhanced a bit in PS.

[Serge]

Full marks for attempting Andre :beerchug:
that's what about I saw through the viewfinder yesterday myself, that's called the second contact point incidentally,
the first being when the planet just touches the perimeter, I read it. :D