4.1.11

January 11 eclipse.

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It didn't look promising. It was so totally overcast it was actually getting darker by the minute instead of brighter! Then my wife spotted some brightness through an upstairs window. I grabbed my TZ7 compact camera and ran along the drive to get a clear shot:


This image, believe it or not, was taken on zoom macro setting. I had been playing with macro the evening before. With hindsight I should have taken a solar foil filter but I didn't have time to think about anything but clearing the foreground obstructions. The window of opportunity was less than five minutes before the overcast descended again. Probably just as well because my hands were freezing in the wind.


Cropped from a full optical zoom image. One of only a couple of shots which were not badly overexposed. Reworked in PhotoFiltre to bring out the sun at the expense of the clouds. Without the clouds I'd have obtained no useful images at all. I was watching several British TV news programmes and nobody seemed to be enjoying clear skies.

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