After six minutes in total eclipse, returning sunlight breaks across the low ground
of Mare Marginis, a lava plain on the limb of the Moon. Totality began under hazy
skies which improved over the next few minutes. I ran
through my rehearsed exposure sequence a second time. By the time the diamond ring appeared,
I'd long since run out of film in the camera behind my telescope. This photo was made using
a relatively short 200mm Nikkor lens and a 2x telextender. For 31 years, I was disappointed with my best eclipse photos from 1973. Then I revisitted those made with the 200mm telephoto. A 36-bit Nikon film scanner and a fast Dell let me average
multiple frames to virtually eliminate Kodachrome's already fine grain. Unsharp-masking brought out low-contrast coronal details. Careful resampling let me zoom in tight.
Digital layering retained information from long and short exposures to improve
the film's notoriously narrow dynamic range (go ahead, try to hold 7 or 8 stops of detail on a single frame of Kodachrome). Sometimes you have to wait 31 years to say, "Just one more." Now we have it right. (Jonathan Kern and Wendy Carlos have pioneered even more ambitious techniques along the same lines. Jonathan was also on this expedition; maybe this was an idea that blew in on the Saharan wind.)
Techtalk: Kodachrome-25 exposed for 1/15, 1/30,
and 1/250 second, 400mm at F8.
