[X] My Assistant

[ElkGroveDan]

I took a stab at some photos of the eclipse last night. It was very close to total where I live in Northern California. I was getting a slight amount of glow off of one limb during "totality".

These were all shot with a Canon 400D with Canon's low-end 75-300 5.6 zoom, all at 300mm. The partial eclipse images were f11 1/125 sec ISO 200.

The saturated partial image was f11 3sec ISO 200

The total eclipse image was f5.6 3 sec ISO 400.

I have higher res images of the partial eclipse sequence taken about 5 minutes apart if anyone wants them. After all these years I'm still new at astrophotography, so I'm still getting mixed results. The digital camera sure makes life easy for calibrating exposures though. I'm really unhappy with the images during totality. I have no idea why they aren't sharp. Perhaps the long exposures and the movement of the moon, but I didn't think it would be noticeable at 3 sec.

I only stayed up for totality, as that was almost 3:00 am here and I have responsibilities that require sleep such as a 9-5 job and kids to get to school etc. etc.

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[ElkGroveDan]

I actually just got the lens last week. I bought it for family and vacation photos mostly kids at the zoo, and concerts and recitals and things like that. For a price under $200 you really can't go wrong. So far it has exceeded my expectations. I drove around the countryside here taking photos of horses and barns from far off. Really nice, though it is large and a bit awkward if you are also chasing kids around a park.

I think if I were to take a whole lot more eclipses and star trails and such, I'd probably get the higher end Canon. If you have experience with modern the off-brands I'd be interested in hearing your results. My photography background goes back to the late 70s and early 80s when the very best lenses were the manufacturers' own, particularly Canon, and some of the mass produced low-cost lenses were just horrible. I suspect as with all technology a lot of that has changed though.