So, as I mentioned this morning, we had a nice view of the annular eclipse today. I'd never seen one (nor have I ever seen a total eclipse, except on TV). Here are a few more pictures.

That picture above illustrates in one way just how bright the sun is... I was using stacked filters to cut all but 1/3,200th of the light, leaving everything dark except the sun, which was still completely blown out. I wonder what the dynamic range is during one of these things, between the surface of the moon and the surface of the sun.

Notice [...]

We had a nice view of the annular ('ring-shaped') eclipse from Kyoto this morning. We are on the edge of the shadow's path, so the view for us was of the moon skirting the edge of the sun. We had only 100 seconds of ring. (Folks in Tokyo got five minutes.) I took a bunch of pictures, but don't know whether anything came out. Will look through them later. At the moment (an hour later), the sun still has a small bite out of it, getting smaller by the minute.

Continued here...

This post is about a new camera-bag solution I'm trying, and so far like, involving an unconventional use of a Think Tank Photo Retrospective® Lens Changer 3 shoulder bag. You can see it at my side in the photos above.

I usually bring just a few lenses when I'm out with the camera, often a Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 and a pair of Nikkor f/1.4 primes (24mm and 50mm). My normal bag is the v1 version of the Think Tank Photo Speed Racer, a nice bag with a silly name, and it's not bad with how I shoot, but I was [...]

I like heading off on my scooter into the mountains of Japan to explore and take pictures, but am often out of cell range, so the map on my iPhone can't update. I like the idea of having maps with me, and until someone can invent a way to make a map on paper or some other high-tech solution, I'm happy to have recently discovered the Galileo Offline Maps (Name changed Feb 2019 to Guru Maps) iOS app.

After installing the free base app and purchasing the $1.99 "import maps from PC" feature, I could import maps made on my [...]
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I went out for a bit today with the Big Lens. Nothing too exciting, but a few pleasant shots...

This post's last shot reminds me strongly of the last shot on "Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre in Kyoto" from four years ago.