I am getting a new digital camera this winter (Olympus E-520), which I will use with an old-style Olympus 500mm telephoto lens. The digital camera crop ratio will mean that the lens will have an equivalent focal length of 1000mm (if it was being used on a film camera).
Has anyone here experimented with solar photography, but NOT using a telescope? I have found a photo on Flickr that was taken with a camera using an equivalent focal length of 600mm and it wasn’t bad at all:
Without even a small telescope I think you would be rather limited. What is really cool is set-ups where you pipe the camera straight through to your computer so you can view much larger images before capturing them. Also way cool done on a microscope.
Hey Beth, I think it will depend on the sensitivity of your camera’s CCD chip, and the overall quality of the camera’s optics, zoom and the quality of the optics of the filter. When I was at the planetarium, the filter of choice for solar photography were Hydrogen Alpha (HII). Not sure if that’s the case today or not. One thing to note - safety. As you well know, you NEVER should view the sun directly with unprotected eyes. This is true for any optical device that focuses light really. As for the filter itself, my suggestion would be the glass version above and beyond all else. Best protection, best optics and best durability over all the rest. The mylar type filters are ok, but are generally not quite as clean as the glass for astro/solar-photography. Either way, observing and photographing the sun is a great subject, and one that I remember well from several high school physics projects. All the best!
P.S. here are a couple shots I got of the other end of the sky. This was with my Sony DSC H9 at 15X optical zoom (digital zooms are crap) I believe the equivalent is something like 465mm lens. Not the cleanest at this extreme of my lens, but nice.
These are reduced in size of course from the original files, but Sol and Luna are close to each other in relative angular size. You should be able to get some nice images regardless.
Yes, I will be a bit limited without a telescope, but as I won’t be getting a telescope, I’ll live with it It’s not worth owning a telescope in London, as there are no stars visible and we haven’t got a car to get to the countryside.
Don’t worry Bri, I’m taking all necessary safety precautions - my brother would never forgive me if I did something stupid involving astronomy.
I’d like to get a glass filter but have not yet found one with a camera thread - do you know of any sources? All the ones I have seen so far are telescope mountings.
I just found a site with some comparative size shots, quite interesting:
I forgot that I’ll also be getting a 1.4x teleconverter when I get my camera, so that should bring my maximum focal length to 1400mm - not quite full frame, but respectable, when compared with the 1600mm one on that site.
I’ll get a better pic of the sun once the weather is nicer here. That one was taken in Houston and I didn’t have my big lens with me. And it was cloudy.
