How chemical film saw the eclipse: early scans
Just for the record here are early scans (made in a 1-hr lab) of photographic negatives I took with the famous "Russentonne" used during most eclipses since 1994, including the last one. The film used this time was a 100 ISO Fuji Superia, bought in China and with an ad for the 2010 Expo in Shanghai on the box. There's certainly more in these negatives than what the lab got out.
The situation minutes before 2nd contact: the crescent of the Sun is seen through a cloud, but it's moving away ...
... though this image taken a few seconds before 2nd contact makes it clear what a close call it was!
Shooting away with no filter - and a little alignment problem: because the photospheric crescent was still too bright to look into the viewfinder directly, I had to put a solar filter between my glasses and the latter - but now I couldn't see the edge of the field of view anymore. And during the tense cloud situation the Sun had 'made contact' with the lower edge already ...
Now re-aligned the corona with two vastly different exposure times ...
... and the 3rd contact which I nearly missed because the view of the whole sky around the black Sun (shown in the other totality page) was just too fascinating.
Just meant to fill up the film (and to give a clue to the automatic cutter!), this view of the sky many minutes after 3rd contact - with a 50 mm lens - came out quite dramatic. Note how the Sun is about to disappear behind another much bigger cloud. Final views of the post-totality landscape below:
The story continues on the digital totality page which also has wide-angle views!