I got all the bookings done to photograph the total eclipse of the sun on 14 November in Cairns. The total eclipse is expected at 6:38 am at 13.5° above the horizon and last for 2min. Sunrise is at 5:34 am and the partial eclipse begins a few minutes later. At 6:00 am partial eclipse is half way across. The main outstanding factors are the weather and the best location. Any ideas on the location? Will photograph with a canon 5DmkIII and either a 500mm canon with 2x extender or a borrowed 800mm with 1.4x. Any thoughts? I have ordered some Baader solar film and a canon internal filter holder that will fit both 500mm and 800mm lens. I’ll use a homemade altitude and azimuth gimble mount with a Gitzo GT1354ILS tripod. Hope that is stable enough.
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After a year trying to get the images printed on an Epson 7900 to conform in a consistent manner to what I was seeing on my DELL 30″ LCD screen, I purchased a new NEC Spectra view 3090 monitor at 40% discount. It is a great monitor, but I still was not able to get a consistent monitor calibration, using the Spectraview 5.0 software and the Eye one pro. In fact the best contrast I obtained was 80:1 and this decreased with each further attempt at calibration. Then I noticed that the Eye one pro was slightly warm to the touch. Could the screen be warming the Eye one pro spectrophotometer? I bought a USB powered fan to cool the Eye one pro during the calibration and Walla! The contrast shot up to 400:1, and the monitor calibration became consistent. So it is necessary to air cool the Eye one pro spectrophotometer to get a decent monitor calibration.
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Castles, Stratford, and the Fat Duck. Stratford on Avon. Going to a Shakespearean play at the Royal Theater in Stratford upon Avon was a must-do experience. Only two adjacent, but expensive seats were available when I tried to book three months in advance. But it was well worth the expense. The play was performed inside an intimate theater (it actually holds 1000 spectators) with minimalist staging. The staging was of little importance, as the brilliance of the production, was the ability of the actors to articulate Shakespeare in a way that made their performance understandable, and with a delivery that mimicked the song of modern English. To complete the experience we stayed the night at the Shakespeare, a hotel housed inside three converted 17th century Tudor halls close to the town centre. The public lounge, tea rooms and restaurant still retained much of their true character. We just had to have high tea in the historic tea room. Stratford has done exceptionally well in preserving the historic facade of the Tudor period, housing Macdonald’s restaurant and the supermarkets inside buildings with period shop fronts. It was a pleasure to stroll down the central area amongst historic buildings. Had lunch at […]
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Part 1. Oxford and the Cotswolds. This was our first extended visit to the Oxford region since I left my research establishment near Abingdon, 34 years ago. At that time, Britain was one of the foremost technological and scientifically advanced countries in the world. It also had a rich, traditional heritage, full of pomp and ceremony and its country villages oozed old world charm. So going back to my old stomping grounds near Oxford was not only to see how the region had fared to the global challenges, but also to see if that special feeling we experienced in being part of the English way of life for 10 years still remained. My other object was to see if any of my former colleagues were still employed and to reestablish contact with our old friends in Abingdon and London. I also wanted to be a tourist and revisit some of the top tourist places, and visit a few good English restaurants. Oxford. We arrived at Oxford station by train and took a taxi to our rented apartment in a quiet location behind the Oxford castle. From here it was a casual 10 min walk to Carfax and the heart of Oxford. Almost immediately I noticed a number of substantial changes. ♦ How expensive the trains had become. The casual purchase of a day return to London by train was now £50/person, too expensive for us to go to London […]
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