So I've fallen way behind and haven't even thought about corona imaging in months. Basic equipment isn't really in question; I'll likely use my Canon 300mm with a 1.4x teleconverter and an Ha-modified 6D, all on an RST-135.
Exposure control is where I need to focus. Is Solar Eclipse Maestro the way to go? Is anyone going to use NINA? Should I just forget about software at this point and do bracketing?
In my opinion, there is no "way to go". There are too many variables. First is your goal: are you trying to get a "decent" image of the corona and that's it? Or are you trying to get one of the caliper of the best images seen around, such as the ones of Jerry Lodriguss or Druckmuller? The former are much easier and will allow you a workflow in which it's hard for anything to go wrong. The latter are quite complicated and you have to be really disciplined in *a lot* of details.
Just to mention the most mundane one which failed a friend doing a music gig with a computer: overheating. If you bring a computer outdoor, obviously in the sun for hours, you must make sure it does not overheat, throttles and shutdown when totality starts....
Bracketing will work, but are you capturing only totality or partiality too? If the latter you have to change settings in your camera at the worst moment: are you super-familiar with it and be able to do it under pressure? Or does your camera offer banks/usersettings to make it a breeze? But most importantly, can your camera do interval shooting and bracketing AT THE SAME TIME? If not, that's not gonna work. If so, how many bracketing steps can your camera do? For the sophisticated imaging you need at the very least 9 steps, and probably more, see for example the exposure step Lodriguss used in 2017: https://www.astropix...hdr_corona.html
On the other hand, the most complicated and more sophisticated thing you do, the more likely that something will go wrong (on its own or because you make a mistake) or that if you need to make a last-second judgement call you will have a hard time doing it.
Now, that said, and with my goal of attempting to take the best images possible, I am using three DX (Nikon half-frame) cameras on a 714mm f/7 telescope, a 300mm f/4.5 lens and 250mm f/3.5 (probably stopped down to f/5.6) lenses. One camera will be a D5300, another a Z50 and the third I haven't decided yet. On the Z50 I could probably do intervalometer with bracketing and that is not ideal (I would need more exposure values that I can get with it), but it should be self-contained and high reliability without my manual intervention. On the D5300 I will use either qDSLRdashboard or a custom python script with python-gphoto2. On the third camera... well it depends on what it is. Using three different thing will increase the chances that something will go wrong, and make it more complicated for me to deal with all of them, but my kids will be with me and each one of us will be in charge of one lens/camera. Everything being different will make it less likely that *everything* will go wrong.
Most important, do *a lot* of dry runs. We are already doing it all the time, and will do another one on Saturday with the partial eclipse. Certainly not the same, since you don't take the filters off, but you can pretend that the maximum of the partiality were the totality and start taking pictures with the exposures for the corona. Of course the exposure will all be wrong, but you can still check: are you affected by motion blur? Is your mount tracking accurately? Is the sun center in the frame, and if not, were you able to recenter quickly enough? Did the computer overheat? You can learn many things.
Edited by DelVento, 09 October 2023 - 09:31 AM.
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