Sunspot photos

Dilip Kumar shares these photos that he took of the Sun

He writes

" The photos 336 and 37d, were taken in the evening directly without filter, since its safe to shoot when the Sun is close to horizon with Red disc, without the glare.

Its better to take many shots in Manual mode with different exposures since, its difficult to judge the correct exposure. On the other hand if Programme or Auto modes are used, the correct exposures may not be possible, since if the disc of the Sun is small the camera will try to take reading from the larger outer area and resulting in Sun getting over or under exposed.

When longer focal length lens is used, the Sun's disc will be larger and better exposures can be achieved, but, its still better to bracket the exposures to get best photo. Its always better to use lower ISO to take advantage of getting finer grains ( 200 to 400 ) since Sun is bright, a fairly good shutter speed can be achieved with larger openings of the aperture, as the Sun is a far object, Depth of field is negligible.

In case of longer focal length lens or with compact cameras with 12X or higher zoom, its better to use a tripod, stand or place the camera on some support like wall or take support of a tree to avoid shake.

The photos, 124d & 135 were taken with a flter in place (Baader), it was taken in midday with manual exposurre. The filter sheet is cut to the size of the lens diameter and it is mounted between two KG Card sheets, which is attached to the front of the lens with scotch tape.

All pic.s were taken with 300mm lens with 1.7x teleconverter, which works out to 500mm. Even with small compact camera with fairly good zoom like 12X and above, fairly good photos can be taken."

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