Video

Agreed

Thanks very much!

Thanks for the kind words and I'm glad you've found it useful.

Any effort is a worthwhile effort when it comes to something as special as an eclipse! Good on you for attempting it!

Yea, this one has been fun. The camera bodies I have partially built are around 8.5ft which is pretty ridiculous!

That's about the correct response! :)

Oh definitely! Initially I’m only interested in the long focal length and the center of the image but after seeing its coverage I’m thinking an obscura room will be in the works for sure!

Thanks very much for the kind words. That's appreciated!

When I do this, once the surfacing and polishing of the copper is done, I just wipe them and prepare them for electroplating. If I'm going to do the electroplating myself, they'll go through a series of cleaning and degreasing steps which can involve an acetone wipe or bath among other things. These days, I more typically send them out for plating which reduces my workload. In those cases, I just wipe the surface with a clean microfiber and apply a static cling type protective film before sending to the plater who will then run them through chemical cleaning and degreasing baths as a preliminary step in their plating process.

There is no full version as the talks weren't filmed in full. The excepts were snippets captured by my wife and folks in the audience and then shared with me which I compiled. I've gotten tons of requests for a video covering the full range of topics covered in the talk so I'm thinking about putting something like that together which might be a fun video project.

There is an authentic 1850 period sliding box camera on the table which was loaned to us. All other cameras and camera obscuras in the talk/ display were made be me for these demos. They all work.

@@francescofragomeni awesome

I use both clad plates and electroplated plates. Two different methods for silvering. I mainly use copper plates as is most common traditionally but have experimented with other metal bases. In cladding, the two metals are bonded together under great pressure that causes them to fuse. The only place to get clad plates today is Century Darkroom. They are excellent and have a lot of silver on them so I like to use them when working on something where I may need to iterate and use a plate numerous times. In other cases when I know I'll get the image in one or two tries, I use electroplated plates which I have either plated for me or I plate them myself. Those have about half the silver on them. Both methods and a combination of the two are historically accurate. Copper and brass were used in the 19th century, copper being most common. Initially clad plates were most common because electroplating technology had not yet been perfected. After various advancements in generators were made, electroplating become more common. There was also a period where the preference was for using clad plates that had a final silver layer added by electroplating so the combination of the two.

Thanks for the detailed reply - it is very much appreciated!

We'll I've taken the camera apart and plan to rebuild it at some point but I have considered loading it with a ton of rolls all lined up. Some interesting work has been done like that. Overall though, I don't use film and 20x24 roll film is definitely not a thing!

Yea, truly. I honestly didn't know what to expect with this. I had to extrapolate exposure information from examples in collodion from past eclipses and then basically guess on exposure. Mine have solarized here but in a sweet spot that still works well for the images. I'm bummed that I'll have to wait 22 years to get a good go at trying this again but very happy that these actually worked!

Thanks John. Hope your new boxes are going well!

Yea, those are achieved a few different ways. I have a device from the 19th century that allows divisions for multiple exposures per plate but I haven't gotten around to repairing it yet. I'll be working on that soon and plan to do a lot with the concept.

So very true. Thanks very much for your kind words and support!

The other device is a solar viewer which is a means of projecting the eclipse or the sun to make observing it safer.

Good work! Don't minimize it! Any image of an eclipse on a dag, becquerel or mercury, is an achievement!