Solar eclipse

The talk of the last few days in Penang was that there would be an annular solar eclipse on 26 Dec 2019 and it would be visible in the country. The only catch was that for the peninsula, a total eclipse could be seen only at Tanjong Piai on the southernmost tip of the mainland. In other parts of the country, only a partial eclipse would be visible and the further north one was located, even less of the partiality could be experienced. Thus, I wasn't particularly interested in the eclipse and in fact was saying to people that they wouldn't see much of a difference anyway! From Penang's point of view, it wasn't as if the land was going to be plunged into total darkness at the height of the partial eclipse.

Then unexpectedly, my daughter came into the picture. Messaging me from Kuala Lumpur, she exclaimed that there was an eclipse and she had managed to snap a picture of the sun amidst a thick layer of clouds.

By then too, social media had exploded with other pictures of the eclipse from various locations in the country. Sigh.....there was to be no escaping the eclipse wherever I was. Too many excited people around.

I was on my way home from the island. Whilst driving back, I remembered suddenly that I had a set of neutral density camera filters at home. I had bought them some 30 to 40 years ago when I was still playing around with my Canon A1 camera. Though the camera is all spoilt now and discarded in favour of my present Olympus PEN-7, I was still keeping the old filters, not knowing whether they would come in handy again. Now's the time to find out.

Immediately on reaching home, I rummaged through the cupboard and retrieved the filters. Screwed them together and then attempted to fit them onto the end of my Olympus lens. Incredulously, they fitted and I was amazed. Same 58mm filter diameter, my ND filters and my lens barrel. So it was a quick check of my camera equipment, found everything working and ready to go! I turned outdoors, set my camera to a shutter speed of 1/4000s and an f-stop of f22, and aimed the camera skywards. I was confident that with these settings and the three neutral density filters of NDx14, I was ready to face the sun. The combined NDx14 would ensure that my camera sensors won't get fried. And I clicked furiously away.....