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Photographing The Sun Using Aluminum foil

ShiroKuro

New member
Walking around the neighborhood today ,I came across this guy photographing the sun using a piece of aluminum foil .
The foil is translucent enough to act as an ND filter allowing him to photograph the sunspots ....

camera was set at f/11 ,1/25, -2/3 ,300mm lens with a converter ..... it worked surprisingly well .......

So there you go, an alternative approach to photographing the sun using items from your kitchen drawer ...... :)

 

JMichael

New member
Sure that wasn't aluminized mylar? That is used for some solar filters. Similar to what is used for helium balloons.
 

ShiroKuro

New member
Aluminized Mylar ..... lol that is probably what he was trying to say ... so much for the language barrier ; ) my Japanese is not as good as I thought .
So a mylar ballon is a better alternative to the aluminum foil lol ... thanks for clearing that up J Michael .

Sorry Pop no photo ,though I did see the results on the LCD and there were spots on the sun for sure ....

Any way it appears I botched this entire post ..tin foil,sun spots ... I think it may have been the transit of Venus he was photographing ......
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2155140/Transit-Venus-2012-Spectacular-seen-time-2117.html
I'll go back to not posting now ; )
 
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Gbealnz

Member
Be careful with using "aluminum foil", at best the camera might suffer, at worst you could blind yourself.
What is needed is what JMichael said, and I use a product called "Baader AstroSolar Film". It is light and looks to all intents and purposes like aluminum foil.
It gives fantastic views, and images, attached is one from a few weeks back. Scope was about 500mm focal length, camera a small video style camera, where about 1000 frames captured, aligned, and stacked to produce a single shot.
If you want the ultimate hole in the wallet, Google "Hydrogen Alpha Solar Imaging", it is somewhat gear intensive, believe me. I can post some shots from this as well, if you like, but it's getting a tad off-topic.
Gary
 

pixelsmithy

New member


This image was made with homemade solar filter, using the aforementioned Baader AstroSolar material and using an empty CD/DVD container (see details here) slipped over the end of my Bigma hood.
Camera: Pentax K-3
Lens: Sigma EX 50-500mm f4-6.3 APO DG
Tripod mounted with 12 second self-timer.

Best 3 RAW files were converted to TIF and then aligned and stacked with Registax6. That file was saved and opened in Photoshop CS6 and converted to Greyscale. Post-processing consisted of unsharp masking, reducing image size, adjusting brightness/contrast. Converted back to RGB and applied false color at the RGB channel midranges.
 

JoelM

Well-known member
Very nice photo with your filter. I have a Coronado 60mm scope that I am getting used to and have been using my Sony cameras to take pictures through. A more specialized camera will work better for me, but I will wait on that.

Joel
 
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