Out of the last few solar eclipses, I think this is the first time anyone with better equipment, able to take better pictures, than I, got any better pictures.
One thing I still have not acquired is a suitable neutral-density filter to let me take pictures of the Sun.
A previous time or two, I used a device that I made to fit in the back of my ancient 85-205mm ƒ/3.8 Vivitar zoom lens from the late 1960s or early 1970s, with a pinhole to serve as a very small aperture.
In October of 2023, there was very heavy overcast, with, just by dumb luck, the Sun finding a thin enough spot to show through, right at the moment the eclipse was at its peak, while dimming it enough that my camera could handle it without the pinhole device.
I actually wound up getting a very good image on that occasion.
I think on all those occasions, nobody else in this forum had good enough weather to make the attempt.
This time, I made a pinhole attachment for the front of my Vivitar lens. It doesn't seem to work an better or worse that the attachment for the back of the lens.
As I was testing my latest rig, it occurred to me, much too late to have time to build it, that what I really ought to have tried was a pinhole-only device. With the pinhole at that distance from the sensor, it could have served as the lens itself. A body cap, with a hole cut in it, a paper towel tube glued to the front of it, and a pinhole at the other end of the tube, might have worked better than what I was doing; just the pinhole itself, without all the glass in the way.
Anyway, here's my sequence from first contact to last contact.