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Topics - hip17702

#1
General Chat / Sun photography = DANGER!
June 27, 2013, 07:33:37 PM
Having asked the community for some help about a specific aspect of sun photography I would like to stress with you the danger inherent to this activity:

Never look or picture the sun directly, especially with teleobjective, without specific filtering. Any mistake can have devastating consequences on your camera, your eye, or both!

Light coming from the sun not only contains visual wavelenghts, but also a huge amount of UV and IR light. So even if the image seems not dazzling, IR and/or UV can still be harmful! The "trick" consisting to blacken a sheet of glass with a candle to make a homemade filter is not safe at all. Using a very dark grey filter, or stack of them is not safe at all. Any solution not specifically designed to observe the sun will be dangerous!

If you need to picture the sun please to not hesitate to ask a specialist around you (mainly astronomy club) about specific filtering, or drop me a message I will be happy to help.
#2
Before speaking about the feature itself please allow me to introduce the context. When doing solar photography I use a telescope as objective (will be a 900mm F6 équivalent) with absolutely no communication with the camera. Not a problem as it is possible to focus using the telescope and take pictures with manual mode.

The main problem is air turbulence. Even if the telescope is perfectly focussed on the sun, air turbulence will randomly blur the image, from quite nothing to totally fuzzy. Currently I shoot 60 pictures in a row to get in best cases 5 not too blurred and in the worst case nothing at all. It is possible to monitor the turbulence via liveview, but if you try to shoot at the right moment  :o... it's always too late  >:(.

Maybe will it be possible to use a function like "Motion Detect" that will fire the camera if the image is at its maximum contrast, condition met only with few to no air turbulence? I yes I'm sure all astrophotographers will bless you and your family until the 30th generation  :P. If not we will stop at the 29th  ;D
#3
Greetings everybody.

A small introduction seems to be the rule around, but what to say about me having any interest? Maybe that I am an astrophotographer and I use ML on one modified Canon EOS 60D (IR filter removed and replace with a glass, allowing IR pictures) and a Canon EOS 60Da. ML is an invaluable tool for my hobby and I cannot thank enough the team who brought it to us, for free. A donation is in order...

Please be patient with me -as I'm more an astronomer than a photographer- if I don't grasp immediately what is clearly explained and if I ask stupid questions like "Do you accept suggestions?" and "If yes, what is the right forum's topic to do so?", and that as English is not my native language I may miss the point...  :-[

FYI an article in "Astronomy Technology Today" (Volume 7 Issue 3) descibes why astronomers do love ML. It is here: https://www.astronomytechnologytoday.com/?l=/issues.asp