1999 Total

The Story

1999 promised to be a great eclipse. The path crossed most of western and eastern Europe, including many major cities such as Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Munich and Salzburg.. But the weather prospects were better further east in Turkey. Paul Maley's Ring of Fire Expeditions was organising another trip, and I thought I'd tag along again. But my buddy from Curacao, Josef ("Diver Dan") Prall, twisted my arm to partner up with him to see the eclipse from the Black Sea.

The major reason was comfort. My last two eclipses had been in deserts, and Paul's expedition would have been the third. Dan convinced me that the luxury of having a bar immediately available post-eclipse was a major plus. My main concern was whether the ship would be stable enough for decent photography -- I'd read various stories suggesting just the opposite. But the ports of call -- Istanbul, Odessa, and Athens in particular -- were the clinchers, so Dan and I signed up to share a cabin on the Olympic Countess, one of four cruise ships of the Royal Olympic line heading for the eclipse in the Black Sea.

I met up with Dan in Istanbul, where we spent a few days admiring the local sights: the Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkaki Palace, the Hippodrome and the Grand Bazaar. We then joined the ship (which had started from Athens), proceeded on to Constanza and Odessa, and then on to its rendezvous with the eclipse.

Eclipse day was perfect. A large high pressure system sat over the Black Sea. While satellite shots showed cloud cover over much of Europe and eastern Turkey, our sky was perfectly clear. The sea was absolutely flat, and conditions were perfect for photography.

The day before, Dan and I had staked out our position on the appropriately named Helios Deck, which was also where the NASA gear was set up. On the day, the deck became a tripod garden, but we had the perfect spot -- up against the railing on the sunward side of the ship, so no chance of our view being obstructed by an excited spectator.

As the eclipse got under way, the convoy of ships cut their engines and drifted into position. This didn't eliminate all vibration, as the generators and other equipment were left running. And then at the first glimpse of totality, the captain set off the ship's horn for what seemed like an hour, and you could feel the vibration through the deck. But apart from these small problems, the ship was as good a platform as dry land.

Totality was different yet again from previous eclipses. There were several prominences clearly visible to the naked eye, and the corona was distinctly circular, with little evidence of equatorial streamers. But the view through the telescope was the most impressive. With just a few seconds to go before totality, I looked through my camera and telescope combination, and the view of the shrinking Diamond Ring was awe inspiring. I found myself taking the shots on autopilot, looking through the viewfinder all the time, and marvelling at the beauty of it all. Now I was starting to understand why Douglas Arnold never takes his eye away from his camera during an eclipse. Everything went like clockwork: the sun was following the long axis of the film, and panning the camera to retain centering was easy. For the first time, I felt that I was starting to understand how to take eclipse photos.

The rest of the trip was the usual anticlimax. Dan and I spent 2 days in Athens exploring the local sights, then I flew home via Paris. Back home Monday morning, back to work Wednesday. I had the film processed by the Monday afternoon, and was happy with the shots. Little did I know it was going to take more than eight weeks to have them properly mounted, but that's another story ...

The Equipment

Taking photographs from a ship was a good reason to upgrade my equipment. (Well, that's what I told myself ...) My experience in Curacao had shown me that a fast optical system helped in giving a brighter image for focussing. I was also concerned about vibration and movement from the ship, another reason to go for fast optics and film. I also wanted to be able to rotate the camera to get the best framing of the corona, and to let the image drift across the long axis of the film. Last, I wanted a focal length of around 800mm.

There aren't that many choices available for a fast 800mm system. I looked at buying a nice refractor ... well, for a few minutes anyway, till I realised that it would cost a large fraction of the whole trip. So the obvious choice was a Celestron C5 with an f/6.3 focal reducer, which gives an 800mm focal length. By an amazing bit of serendipity, I had a 5" solar filter originally purchased by Peter McKinnon for the 1991 eclipse which was a perfect fit for a C5. Decision made.

The final equipment lineup was a Minolta X700 body (same one as 1998, too), Celestron C5 at f/6.3, and Fuji Provia 400 ISO film. In hindsight, I should have taken 100 ISO film as well, since the conditions were so good that the finer grain may have made for better shots.

Dan and I did test runs with our equipment on our last day in Istanbul before boarding the Olympic Countess. Everything was working fine. But on our test run the day before the eclipse, I discovered that my right-angle viewfinder was broken. As luck would have it, Dan's Olympus viewfinder was a reasonable fit for my Minolta. Problem solved, except it was clear that the two of us might come to blows on eclipse day. Dan loaned me the viewfinder a few times during the partial phases, but started to worry how we were going to cope with totality. As it turned out, sighting through the normal viewfinder was not that difficult, so the conflict he anticipated didn't eventuate.

The other equipment problem I had was not apparent till I returned home to discover that many of my tourist shots were affected by a light leak. This was particularly disconcerting since the camera had been serviced just prior to departure. Luckily, the only eclipse shots affected were the partial phases and only one of totality.

The Plan

It was hard to predict what the conditions on board the ship were going to be, so devising a plan wasn't easy. I realised that there was little chance of getting shots of the partial phases after third contact (too much celebrating), so I decided to concentrate on totality with just a few partial shots to check that everything was working. Given the speed of my film and lens combination, most exposures were going to be kept short, which restricted the range of available exposure times. This gave me the option of repeating most exposures three times, just in case some shots were affected by vibration or other movement.

The Photos

These are selections of each exposure range. Exposure times were 1/500 for the first three, then a sequence of 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, and 1/30 for mid totality. The sequence is then reversed: 1/60, 1/125, two at 1/250, with the last four at 1/500.

Click on a shot to see it full size.