Shooting sun and moon

I got a decent shot of the moon:
http://home.att.net/~jriegle/moon.jpg

....But the sun is terrible. The color is exaggerated as I was really
punching up the contrast to get the sunspots to show. I thought the moon
would be more difficult to shoot, but the sun is impossible to get a sharp
shot.
http://home.att.net/~jriegle/sun.jpg

Both were shot with the Canon 300 f/4 L and the 2x converter. The moon was
shot one stop open from the 'Sunny 16' rule. With the sun, I tried various
settings. I had a dark filter made of acrylic over the front of the lens. It
gave a brownish color cast. Perhaps it is distorting the image somehow. Any
tips for better sun shots?

Thanks, John

 

I have many pieces of #14 welding glass, some fairly large ones
(about 8x11 cm). I use them over the objective of my 9x60
binoculars. With a filter size of 77 mm that would just fit
your lens with a little jerry-rigging. They only cost me about
two bucks each, and I've used them at 2 solar eclipses as well
as two planetary transits, so I think they've paid for themselves!

 

Not bad at all, IMO. Getting clear pictures of the sun is really hard.
I've used a 2540mm telescope with a 10 inch aperture and had results
that weren't a lot better.

A plastic filter? Hmmm. Try a pair of crossed polarizing filters
(make sure the front one is a linear polarizer - not circular).

Midday. Don't do it any time in the morning or afternoon as the
Earth's atmosphere will distort the image. The daytime atmosphere is
a lot more turbulent than nighttime, so you want to shoot when things
are clear and steady.

Not much you can do about the solar atmosphere short of spending a few
thousand for a hydrogen alpha filter.

 

Yeah, I've tried photographing the sun at nighttime when the atmosphere
is clear and steady, but that darned 8,000 miles of solid earth keeps
getting in the way.

Anyway, for the OP, Kodak's famous Astrophotography Basics tech bulletins
are available on the Kodak website at:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/p150/p150Contents.shtml

[mind the wrap]

A bit of the Getting Started page and the partial phase information
on the Solar Eclipse page have good info about photographing the
uneclipsed sun. The folks on sci.astro.amateur should have some
good advice, too.

Maybe we'll get you hooked and you'll start chasing eclipses, thusly:

http://www.wintertime.com/OH/eclipse-outer.jpg
http://www.wintertime.com/OH/eclipse-inner.jpg`


Patty

 

You could also try a Nuetral Density X400 filter, it will give 9 stops with
little distortion.

 

As kids, we used to get a piece of glass and a candle, and smoke the
glass with the unburnt carbon in the candle flame, then use it to look
at the sun. Was quite safe, since the black coating stopped IR and UV
as well as visible light. An old UV filter, or even a good one, could
be used for this, since the soot will wipe away cleanly when you are
finished.

Colin

 

John-

I wonder if you could rig-up some kind of pinhole camera big enough for
you (or at least your camera) to be inside?

If you photographed the projected image resulting from a small pinhole in
a foil sheet, it should be reasonably sharp (diffraction limited?). The
brightness would be reduced and image size would be determined by how far
it is between the pinhold and the projected image.

Fred