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

FAKE !

Guy Parsons wrote:

Totally extra cool ! OK, not very original but I tried.....

Anyhoo, that made me look up Baader filters and I see this sort of information....

Baader Astro Safety Solar Film ND5 (0.00001 transmission) for direct visual use.

and...

Baader Astro Safety Solar Film ND3.8 for astrophotography only.

So my guess if I want to experiment I should play safe and buy the ND5 film for viewing and see how that goes with photo attempts. Hmmm, now where is my Nikon 180/2.8 and that high quality 2X TC ?

Regards..... Guy

It's also pretty cheap. I bought an A4 sheet from camerahouse for about $40.

Im going to try some long exposures of daytime traffic with it and see what happens.

But how did you know it was passing in front of the sun?

Wow!

Grzzl wrote:

But how did you know it was passing in front of the sun?

What Guy said, but here are some links.

This one is great for finding out when pretty much anything is next to or crossing over something else.  Takes a bit of work to figure out all the options though.  Can send you email alerts for various events too.

http://www.calsky.com/

This is the App I used for this shot.  Really easy to use, pretty much push a few buttons and see everything on a map.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ed_morana.iss_transit_prediction_free

The film is fairly cheap and I have another option for making a filter. I taped the film to my lens hood so I could take it on and off easily for both the annular solar eclipse and the venus transit.

Here was my setup for the Venus transit. Of course I forgot to take my tripod to work that day, so had to do some quick propping to get the pictures.

Annular Solar eclipse

Venus Transit

It's amazing what you can do with these cameras these days!

Great shots btw.  I wonder if you could have captured it with burst.  It's such a small time frame that you don't want to miss it, but worth trying the next time.

Have you done any other astrophotography with your m4/3 through a telescope?  I've tried, but my mount isn't stable enough so I get camera shake and I haven't had the time to get it really well set up.

Kevdog wrote:

The film is fairly cheap and I have another option for making a filter. I taped the film to my lens hood so I could take it on and off easily for both the annular solar eclipse and the venus transit.

Here was my setup for the Venus transit. Of course I forgot to take my tripod to work that day, so had to do some quick propping to get the pictures.

It's amazing what you can do with these cameras these days!

Great shots btw. I wonder if you could have captured it with burst. It's such a small time frame that you don't want to miss it, but worth trying the next time.

Have you done any other astrophotography with your m4/3 through a telescope? I've tried, but my mount isn't stable enough so I get camera shake and I haven't had the time to get it really well set up.

My plan is to try to do burst next time.  For my first attempt I wanted the best chances of getting something so used video.  The E-P5 only can do about 1.5 seconds of RAW burst though, which is pretty tricky timing.

Since the pass is only about half a second long, running out of buffer could pause it long enough to totally miss it.

I'm going to get one of the 95MB/s Sandisk cards to see if I can get the 5fps continious shooting in L mode that the review here says.  My current 45MB/s card can't do it.

(nt)

This is just brilliant.

Thanks for sharing the pics and tricks.

Great capture!
Interesting result on the sun!
I have some sun filter film that I use for sun shots.results are orange when I use it.

What kind of a filter is this?
And i it front mounted?
Reduction ring on front of the lens?
--
Rick Halle wrote:

" Keep in mind that tall buildings sway back and forth so they require faster shutter speeds."

AV Janus wrote:

Great capture!
Interesting result on the sun!
I have some sun filter film that I use for sun shots.results are orange when I use it.

What kind of a filter is this?
And i it front mounted?
Reduction ring on front of the lens?

It's called Baader Solar Film and it gives a slightly bluish cast but a very sharp image. It's simlar to mylar, a very thin and flexable metallic sheet.

A picture of my setup is here... http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53594082

I sandwiched the film between a step up and step down filter, it screws on the front of the lens.

You never want to put a solar filter anywhere but the front of the lens.

Skeeterbytes wrote:

iansmith wrote:

My plan is to try to do burst next time. For my first attempt I wanted the best chances of getting something so used video. The E-P5 only can do about 1.5 seconds of RAW burst though, which is pretty tricky timing.

Since the pass is only about half a second long, running out of buffer could pause it long enough to totally miss it.

I'm going to get one of the 95MB/s Sandisk cards to see if I can get the 5fps continious shooting in L mode that the review here says. My current 45MB/s card can't do it.

Am curious about the time window and how you determine when to begin shooting (I'm presuming you're not counting on seeing it cross the solar disc itself). With video and a fairly accurate timepiece you can just start and stop it with a comfortable margin, but with burst you'd need very precise timing to not bang into the buffer too soon. Would a cellphone be accurate enough, would a GPS be better, or...?

p.s. Even at 10fps I don't seem to have a frame limit on the E-M1 set to LB. RAW is a different matter.

Yeah, the E-P5 has too small of a buffer I am finding.  You can take 50 shots at 10fps before it fills, the E-P5 can only take 15.  Once my buffer fills I can only get about 1.5fps.  Hopefully I can get 5fps sustained with the SanDisk.

Timing is tricky, aside from needing an accurate clock that shows seconds, the ISS is variable in it's orbit.  Data for it's exact position is only updated a few times a week by NASA and every few hours by 3rd party tracking systems, so even with the most up to date numbers if you are unlucky it could show up a second or two earlier or later.

DP's review said the E-P5 can do 5fps until the card fills, so I am going to just start taking pictures 10 seconds before the event and hope at least one of the 2-3 pictures I get is nice and free of atmospheric distortions.

Just picked up a 95Mb/s rated SanDisk.. only getting about half the speed I should.  Will have to post in another thread about it.