The next problem I faced the first time I pointed the camera at the sun was "How do I aim the camera?" The sun is almost overhead which means I need to bend down awkwardly to look through the lens. I really should not be looking through a lens at the sun! I found an old flash foot guard - a little piece of plastic that slips over the contacts to protect them. I glued a small plastic L bracket to the guard and inserted a small bolt through the top of the L. I placed a small white card onto the vertical plain of the bracket as seen above. Now I can point the camera directly at the sun by reducing the bolt shadow on the card to nil.
The last problem I had was "How can I quickly look at the shots to judge exposure?" Even in the shade on a sunny day the LCD on the back of the D90 is very difficult to see and I don't really want to move the camera just to look at the images. It turns out Nikon has a neat piece of software called Camera Control Pro 2 that lets me work the shutter and settings from a laptop. The laptop screen is also difficult to see but I can sit in front of the laptop with a sheet over my head and the laptop. It looks old school but it works.
It was cloudy today but I had a clear sky for 15 minutes and after several test exposures I figured I was getting somewhere.
Shot with a Nikon D90, Sigma 70-300 F4, 2 seconds at F32.
