Total Solar Eclipse 1999 Hungary
Staring directly at the Sun (except the totality) without a solar filter is dangerous. Do not do that.
This is a very simple page, you can find more information about my other solar eclipse pages ( 2006 2009 2016 ).
August 11, 1999. This was the first total solar eclipse visible from Hungary in my lifetime, the last so far in Hungary. A detailed map can be seen here. The length of the totality was 2 minutes 22 seconds at the central line in Hungary, I was observing from Zalaegerszeg where the totality was only 1 minute 38 seconds.
I was focusing on the visual observation, so basically I had no idea how to photograph a solar eclipse and I had no special equipment to use.
Partial Phase
I still have the solar eclipse glasses I was using to observe the eclipse. Of course I'm not brave enough to use the glasses decades later.
It seems to me I hadn't taken any pictures of the partial phase. Of course the glasses were too small to use as a filter, but we also had welder's glass.
Totality
I took a few pictures during totality. My equipment:
- Tripod ( unstable Hama )
- Pentax MZ-5
- SMC Pentax-F 1:4-5.6 35-80mm kit lens
- Kodak Gold 400 film
There are sun flares on the picture, the kit lens is not the best. I have several bad pictures with a blurred Sun, probably I was using several different exposure times.
What was the focal length? I don't remember. The size of the Sun is 30 pixels on the scanned image. I scanned the image using 300dpi so the size of the Sun is 0.1 inches on the paper. The size of the paper was 5x7, so the Sun is 0.1/5=1/50 relative to the paper. The size of the negative is 24x36mm, which means that the size of the Sun on the negative is approximately 0.5mm. The focal length is 109 times bigger so it was probably 55mm. (I'm quite happy that the result is between 35 and 80mm).