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Want to take your eclipse-photography experience to the next level? Get tips on advanced techniques from Fred Espenak, a.k.a. "Mr. Eclipse," during S&T's live webinar on Tuesday, May 23rd.
Fred Espenak, who recently retired from NASA, has made a long career of chasing — and recording — total solar eclipses.
There's now less than 3 months to go until August 21st's total eclipse of the Sun. And, like me, you're probably wondering how much time and energy to devote to capturing the very best images of the eclipse that you can. Even if you're an experienced photographer with good equipment, capturing the eclipse can be tricky because you'll be working with a challenging photographic subject. And while the partial phases will last for hours, totality itself will come and go in less than 3 minutes.
Fortunately, my longtime friend and colleague Fred Espenak, a.k.a. "Mr. Eclipse," is here for you. He's already provided a webinar that covers the basics of solar-eclipse photography (downloadable here), and now he's readying to provide a second webinar on the advanced imaging technigues that you might want to use during the 2017 solar eclipse.
His live webinar on Advanced Eclipse Photography is Tuesday, May 23rd, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (4:00 p.m. Pacific Time, 23:00 Universal Time). It's $29.99 to participate (or to download afterward), but it will be well worth the cost.
During that hour, Fred will tackle equipment-related topics like using an equatorial mount (for cameras or telescopes) during the eclipse and how to achieve polar alignment during the daytime. Next, you'll hear how to create time-lapse sequences and animations; how to automate eclipse photography with a laptop computer; and how to exploit a DSLR camera's "high dynamic range" (HDR) settings. Finally, Fred will show how you can process your images after the eclipse has come and gone to bring out the most detail.
Best of all, you'll be able to ask Fred questions!
Here's the glorious solar corona, as recorded by Fred Espenak during the total solar eclipse on August 1, 2008.
To be completely honest, you should do everything you can to maximize the time you can spend just watching August's solar eclipse. And if you're intent on taking photos as well, then the automation schemes that Fred will discuss should greatly improve your chances of both watching and imaging this celestial spectacle. So please join Fred — and yours truly — as he shares the kind of expert training that you won't find anywhere else.
Again, the advanced eclipse-photography webinar is Tuesday, May 23rd, beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT. Click here to get more info and to purchase the webinar. I hope you can join us!
The post Fred Espenak Webinar: Advanced Eclipse Photography appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
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PUBLISHED; May 19, 2017 at 03:32AM
