International Space Station crossing the Sun as seen by Micro Four Thirds.

Who said Micro Four Thirds isn't good for fast action? I caught these guys flying past me at 17,000 miles an hour!

Posted this in the Astrophotography section a few days back when I took it but thought you might enjoy seeing it here too.

Pretty amazing what one can do with just a camera these days.   I took these with the E-P5 and an Oly 75-300 at full zoom where it is at it's weakest.  Needed as the ISS is very small when viewed from 400 miles away.  But still pretty good detail for challenging conditions.

The VF-4 was essential, I would have gone blind trying to do this looking at the LCD, even tilted.

I used MJPEG video for the capture as the transit event only lasts 0.6 seconds.  Even with the best timing you can only get withing a second or too which is too short for burst mode on my E-P5.  Going to try with burst mode next time, but with the timing so tight there is a good chance I'll miss it entirely.  But I'd love to get this in a RAW.  MJPEG did pretty well but I bet the quality would be much higher with standard photo, even with the shutter banging away.

Anyway, was a lot of fun taking this.  Lots of prep time, but it came out about as good as I could expect for just a camera and the conditions.

First is a single frame, second is all the frames combined into one image.

And yes, I used a specialized filter for taking pictures of the sun.  Don't try this without one or you will melt your camera!

Far out.  Literally.

Really nice work.

They are quite brilliant.

Peter Del

love it

That is just amazing.  Could you talk about the filter?  Not that I would try this, i will just look at your pics.

Absolutely speechless.....................................

Damn, I only got the moon.

There's info on the filter type, etc in my thread.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3662767

local novice wrote:

That is just amazing. Could you talk about the filter? Not that I would try this, i will just look at your pics.

I use what is called a Baader filter which you can get pre made, or buy a sheet of ti and make your own.

I bought a pair of step up and step down filters and sandwiched a sheet of it between two o-rings cut out of cardboard like this.

That way it can't accidentally fall off, as it screws on to the lens.  You do have to be careful not to poke a hole in the stuff, it's rather thin.  But is more like saran wrap than tin foil, it's pretty resistant to abuse.

This stuff is great because it only gives a slight blue tint and doesn't add any visible blurring like some of the glass filters do, especially welders glass or a stack of heavy ND filters.

There are other options, but this is the one I use and am familiar with.

Awesome!  Love it!

Dang, everyone else has already used all the words I could think of.

Way to go.  Totally!

Wow! Great photo!  Looks like a tie fighter to me

Thanks for the Baader filter info, definitely on my must try list.

Hi

Those are truly excellent! It's nice to see what is possible with some ingenuity and planning.

Sun spots?

Alex Notpro wrote:

Sun spots?

Yep. If you look you'll see they're "upside down" in my shot. I assume Ian is in the northern hemisphere.