As some of you may have read in our last Newsletter (September 2017), while I was down in Oregon enjoying full totality of the eclipse I had tried a little experiment with my Nikon FG body and a Osawa 300mm f5.5 lens. My aim was to see what exactly would happen to a camera, lens and film if I left the shutter open (with out a solar or ND filter on my lens) during the minutes before totality. I did this and much to my disappointment my camera did not burst into flames. In fact the results were pretty undramatic. The camera and lens were fine and I thought the film was too. Until my friend developed it for me and saw that the eclipse light had indeed burned holes through the film. It looks as though it happened almost immediately, as it burned lines into the film as the Sun, Moon and light of the eclipse dragged itself across the sky. I am happy that I used expired Astia 100 for this experiment as after seeing the rest of the roll it seemed to have an intense Magenta hue!
