Help for a confused digital photographer

Hi all

In preparation for the tranist of Mercury in November I am practicing shooting the sun. Coronado MaxScope 60, double etalons; the picture is with a Canon PowerShot A85 at 1/160 sec through a Scopetronix 40 mm lens and adapter (I focus first then add the camera). The film setting is ASA 50. I did a little processing in Canon Image Browser, I also have iPhoto but own no complicated image processing programs. Are there settings I can use to get good resolution and clarity for the transit? I note that the image is washed out in a certain area of the field and can attempt to avoid that area. As you can see, I am primarily a visual observer and frankly, I don't want to get too into photographic equipment, there being only 24 hours in the day!

ciao

Robert Howe

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Hi Robert.

I'll be happy to work with you on this to see if we can get your ready for the transit.

I looked up your camera specs and the good news is you have the controls needed to get some images.

Did you change the color of your image to yellow when you processed it? If not then you are way over exposed. Put the camera in full manual mode - aperture wide open, and adjust your exposure until the sun appears red on the camera's LCD. If there's ANY orange or yellow in the image you are over exposing. You may find that the image on the LCD will look too dark when you have the proper exposure.

One trick is to bracket your exposures. Just take a series of shots, one at each shutter speed. Then look at the results. I bet you'll find that for disk details your shutter speed will be faster than 1/160.

Hang in there. Post your results and your camera settings and I'll try to help you zero in on the proper settings.

I didn't notice if your Canon had a B&W mode. If it does give that a try too. If you get some images that are close and you want to send them to me I'll give you my e-mail address. I'll be happy to play with them to see what I can do.

I've attached one of my old photos taken with an Olympus 2020 2 meg digital camera shot through a regular eyepiece no special processing. It's compressed for posting but you can see spots filaments and prominences. So there IS hope for you.

Tom

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