Camera Labs

Just saw these amazing photos by the French Thierry Legault which he took from a suburb of Paris/France.

Here you can see his photos of the space shuttle "Atlantis" in front of the Sun (stunning pictures in my estimation):
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... 431157.ece

Here you can see his photos of "Atlantis" and the telescope "Hubble" in front of the Sun on his website. He used a Canon 5D Mark II:
http://legault.club.fr/atlantis_hst_transit.html

Enjoy,
HTG

Awesome photos! I once managed to grab a transit of Venus across the Sun, but there's something very cool about seeing man-made machinary out there!

HTG, thanks for posting these pictures. I’ve never seen anything like it and I thing there awesome.

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Cheers, and keep on shooting

That is incredible, how clever some people are.

The photographer, Thierry Legault, has updated his page

http://legault.club.fr/atlantis_hst_transit.html

and is telling a bit more about how he took the shots and added new photos.

There's also a little question and answer part at the end of the page.

Here's what's most interesting to me:

The transition time was only 0.8 seconds and he managed to get the shots at a speed of 1/8000 at ISO 100 using continous shooting blindly (one cannot see the shuttle on the camera's viewfinder) for 16 shots in 4 seconds. The first photo starting two seconds before the expected "arrival time" in front of the Sun.

Getting to know these additional info made me even appreciate his pics more.

You should check out his sturdy tripod in the pictures he has added. Knowing only photo camera tripods this one is a bit bigger.

regards,
HTG

Wow, cool photos! Thanks for sharing!

- Bjorn -

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Street and documentary photographer | Google+ | Twitter | Blog | Tumblr

Leica M9-P (my article on Camera Labs) | Leica D-Lux 5 | 50mm Summilux

Looks like fun I'd have a go too, but I don't know how easy it will be to find out (1) when transits occur and (2) to be in a suitable place to see the transit. As I'm unlikely to change my location significantly (no flying around to world for this) so would have to wait for one to be visible from where I am, which drastically reduces the chances too.

I did look up solar filters for use. Typical ones seem to reduce light intensity by some 10000 times (about 16.6 stops!). If sunspot activity wasn't so low at the moment I might get one for fun.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Hello,

Thank you for sharing information. I saw that